Mark 4: 21- 25
24 July 2011
A few weeks ago, a king in waiting graced us with His visit – along with his wife, of course. One comment that came back time and again is this. How simple and how ordinary they seemed. They talked to people. They looked genuinely interested in what people were telling them. They dressed like most people – Katherine actually wearing the same dress twice. To royal observers, William and Katherine are the hope for a new, better, accessible and up-to-date monarchy.
Having met Prince Andrew before, I wonder if it is not us, commoners, who are putting the royal family on a pedestal, thinking they are something they are not. I wonder if we do not make their life more complicated by making them something they are not.
It is the same with Christianity. Sometimes, as I sit in my office and read a book or an article towards a sermon or another ministry facet, I ask myself, “Does Christianity has to be so complicated?” There are so many ideas out there, it seems, trying to further explain what it means to be a Christian and what it means to live out one’s faith. I would be curious to know how many books are published on Christianity every week. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was not a dozen or so throughout the world. No wonder Christianity seems complicated.
As I read today’s passage and reflected on it, I don’t think it was Jesus’ intention to make following Him so complicated. Sometimes I wonder if the simplicity of His message is, well, just too simple for us. We have to make it more complicated so as to make it more sophisticated. We try to explain things away which cannot be explained except to say that they are mystery. Or we try to explain things so that Jesus’ words would be more appealing and not so startling.
In the parable of the sower, Jesus revealed a secret. If we want our faith to grow we have to trust God fully. And to trust God is more than just knowledge and more than just hearing the Word. It is to put into practice what Jesus taught and follow the example He gave us in His life. I mentioned that the message of the Good News is understandable. However, putting it into practice is another matter. If we want to grow, be strong and be fruitful, we have no choice but to cultivate the soil of our soils and put into practice God’s word.
Jesus makes the point of this simple secret in the passage we will look at today. It is found in Mark 4: 21- 25. “He said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lamp stand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’”
What Jesus is saying here is different from what He says in Matthew. In Matthew, Jesus is calling each of us to be a light into a dark world. In this particular instance, Jesus is referring to himself. He is the light and He did not come to be hidden under a basket or a bed. He came to be seen and to show clearly and plainly.
This reinforces what He says through the parable of the sower. In that parable the sower throws the seed liberally, everywhere. Jesus tells us that He came as the light to do the same. He didn’t come to be hidden. He came to shed the light of God’s kingdom all over this world. He came to be put on a lamp stand.
That is pretty easy to understand. It is quite obvious that Jesus did not try to hide the Good News of God’s kingdom during his three years of ministry. The four gospels record that very well. What does that have to do with us understanding what Christianity is all about, you may ask?
I think that when people first heard Mark’s gospel, they understood what or rather who the stand was meant to be. It was them. They were the ones who would hold Jesus high for all to see. And that is another aspect of the Kingdom of God that not all can see or understand.
“’Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’”
These words of Jesus are connected to the parable of the sower. For the more we cultivate our hearts so that the seed of the Good News can grow, the better our soil gets and the more fruitful and strong our faith becomes. Jesus continues that thought by saying that the more we lift up the light of Christ to shine, the higher we are able to let it shine.
You see, I think that the point Jesus is making in this statement is that we are not the light. The light is Jesus Himself. God will make Jesus shine no matter what because this is His plan – that the Good News will be known and will be seen. The challenge that Jesus issues us is this. We are in possession of light. What will we do with it? Will we attempt to hide, extinguish, aim it or let it shine wherever it may?
We have been entrusted with the Good News of the kingdom of God which tells us that God can be trusted for all that we need. The question is, what do we do with this knowledge? Do we live by that trust or do we live, not really trusting that God can and does provide?
What I mean is this: We all have heard that God has promised to provide for our needs. But what kind of provisions do we want? Do we want provisions like that of our neighbour? Are we looking for material provisions so that our lives can be enriched?
We who live in this land of plenty, how would we respond to the people who find themselves in the turmoil of civil war and drought like Somalia? What is the Good News for these people? How would we respond to people who live in China, working long hours, earning little and having to live in industrial cities far away from their homes and are so polluted that it is always hazy outside? What is the Good News there? And what about the farmer in South America who is asked to grow food using chemicals that are harmful to his and his family’s health, cannot read enough to know how to better protect himself and who will never earn enough money to send his children past elementary school? What is the Good News for them?
We who live in Canada are part of the world that cherishes everything that is material. When we think of the Good News, we think of it mostly in terms of benefit. It is something that is bound to give us an advantage, an edge that we wouldn’t have otherwise. And we most often think of the benefit as being material, and if not immediate, then something which will profit us fairly quickly. We are raised to think of the Good News as something that will make us happy and should prevent hardship. We think of the Good News in terms of success as either increasing our knowledge, our possessions and even our status. And the Good News does have a tendency to give us that in this part of the world primarily because of all the potential that exists here.
But Jesus did not address people for the sake of the material world. He addressed people for the sake of the eternal Kingdom. For sure, the Kingdom of God has an impact on the way we live in this material world. But the greater impact is on why we live in this world and what the next world has to offer. This is where justice and equality will ultimately conquer. This is where everyone will be judged according to what they have done with the seeds that were planted in their hearts. This is where it will be measured how well we allowed the light of Christ shine.
For two thirds of the world, this is the Good News. This is what really matters. For our third of the world, we who have been given much materially, I think in many ways we are the ones who have the least because we so quickly lose sight of the eternal message of the Good News. And we lose sight of what it means to truly trust in the providence of God.
May we truly hear what Jesus is saying about His kingdom and what it means to be one of God’s children in this world. May we lift up the light of Jesus high as we endeavour to learn and live as He has taught us.
Friday, July 22, 2011
A Secret Revealed
Mark 4: 1- 20
17 July 2011
One of the comments that I have often heard in the 25 years that I have been in the professional ministry is this: “How can I read the Bible so that it can make sense to me?” In other words, many people shy away from reading what is in the Bible because they are afraid they will not be able to understand what it says. Maybe you are finding yourself in that category. Relax, because you are not alone.
One day, Jesus was teaching people by the lakeside and He told the following parable. I read it last week and I will read it again, so that it is fresh in our memory. “‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen (Mark 4: 1-9 NRSV)!’”
To us, maybe this parable is clear but to Jesus’ closes friends, it certainly wasn’t. As Jesus was teaching, it would appear that they were feeling more and more in the dark. What was Jesus really talking about? What were these things He was talking about, trying to explain what the Kingdom of God was like?
So, “When Jesus was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that “they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven (Mark 4: 10- 12 NRSV).”
Jesus answer is a quotation from the prophet Isaiah (6:9-10). When I first read these words and thought about them, it would seem that God is keeping people in the dark on purpose. To me, that doesn’t make sense. It would be like my parents talking English to each other. I grew up in a French speaking home, both my parents from French speaking parents, grand-parents and so on. But any time my parents wanted to say something that they didn’t want us to hear or to know about, they spoke English to each other. It used to frustrate me. As much as I would plead for them to tell me what they had said to each other, they wouldn’t. Many times they would simply say,” you’ll see.”
Is God speaking a different language so that some people won’t understand Him? Given the generosity of His sowing, this does not make sense. How can God, the sower of the Good News, spread the seed so generously and liberally without paying any attention to where it may land, give messages that cannot be understood? Why spread the seed if is serves no purpose? Let’s see what Jesus answered his friends.
“ And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. The first are the on-the- path-people where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the rocky- ground-people: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are those among- the- thorns- people: these are the ones, who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. And these are the good- soil- people: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold (Mark 4: 10- 20 NRSV).’”
Nowhere in Jesus’ explanation of the parable does he mention that people don’t understand the Word. Nowhere does He say that the message of the parable is hidden and God purposely hides the message of the Good News from anyone. It seems to be quite the opposite. People hear and people understand. It is what they do with the message that makes the difference.
What Jesus is driving at is this. When the hearer prepares the soil of their hearts properly, their heats, their souls will be fertile. They will produce fruits of the kingdom. However, those who do not have their soil prepared properly will not produce fruit. In fact the Word of God will wither away and die.
Jesus first points out to those who hear but their hearts are so hardened to God that they simply will not allow themselves to believe. They believe what they believe and that is that. Nothing and no one will ever change their minds on the subject. Those of us who have children might remember when they were little, maybe two or three years old. When they have something in mind, nothing can distract them. When a full blown tantrum arises it simply has to run its course. Jesus says that the on-the-path people live so much in the darkness that Satan comes and takes away the seed of Good News as if it never been planted.
Jesus then discusses those who hear the word, receive it, start to grow, but forget to continue to cultivate their soil and enrich it. As soon as hardship arises, their faith weakens. Their trust in God waivers until fear and anxiety takes over and they no longer trust in God. Mark’s listeners would know people like that because they lived in an atmosphere of persecution. Many people had heard the Good News of God and made the decision to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. But as the Romans made their lives difficult and as non followers of Jesus made fun of them and pointed their fingers at them from being different, they let go of their decision and went back to the way they were before.
Indeed, the soil of our hearts needs to be cultivated and enriched if our faith is to grow. Otherwise, at the sight of hardship, we will refuse to believe that God provides. Circumstances will want to tell us that He does not and we will believe that He cannot. In the midst of adversity, believing in God is difficult. Faith requires roots.
The thirds description that Jesus gives is the person who hears the Good News, is interested by it, but gets distracted by life. They really love what they have and the lure of what else they may possess that they let go of the Good News. They only think of the moment or of the immediacy of life. They don’t think of life from an eternal perspective. All they have and will ever have is here or will be here. There is nothing on the other side of this life. And if there is, they are not really concerned about it. I suppose one could say their motto is “Seize the moment.” Perhaps they are the people who hear Jesus saying “Count the cost of following me” and do so, deciding that the cost of following Jesus and living in God’s kingdom is too expansive on this side of life.
The last group of people Jesus mentions are the good- soil people. They are the people who hear the Good News of God and put it in practice. And as they do so, they discover that their faith grows stronger. And the stronger their faith is, the better they are at putting into practice what they hear, the more they understand what Jesus meant by His words.
All week long last week at our VBS, we talked about how upside down God’s Kingdom is. While most people put themselves first, in God’s Kingdom, it is God who is First. While most people put their wants and their desires first, in God’s kingdom, we put other’s needs first. To cultivate good soil for the seed of the Good News is to work on our trust of God.
I told the children last week that the number one thing that God desires for us is that we trust Him – not partially, but fully. This means that I will trust that He will give me what I need for life. I will trust that come what may, He will be there for me. This means that even if I don’t understand my circumstance I will trust that He has not abandoned me.
To trust God, it also implies that I believe in the direction He gives me for living. It implies that I trust his rules for living are the right ones, even if they are different from the ones my society believes. For example, our world tells us that to make it in the world we need all kinds of resources and education. Not that education and resources are bad or not necessary, but that is not what we need to make it in life. I have know people who had more resources and education than they knew what to do with. Still they were not content with life. They keep looking for more. And I have known people who have very little, financially and education, yet, they are the most secure, the most joyful people I have met. Why? It is because they have discovered the secret of life in God. And they cultivate the trust they have in God.
Cultivating the soil that is in our heart requires that we trust in God. And as I trust God, I can allow Him to use me to seed those around me. I seed other people by thinking of them before I think of myself. I think of the resources that I have been given and instead of seeing them as my reward for a job well done, as see them as a gift to be shared. You see, I am nothing more than a steward, as custodian of the resources given to me. I understand that God gives me so that I can give back. He gives me time that I use not just for my endeavours but for others too. He gives me talents in various areas for the purpose of using them to His glory. He has given me life to be a blessing to those around me.
I often reflect when I go to Evergreen to lead a worship service there, about the resident. Many don’t seem to be aware of their surroundings anymore. It would be easy for me to say how terrible of an ordeal this is. What possible purpose could there be in life like that? And I am brought back to the gift they give me. They allow me to love unconditionally. They allow me to learn about patience and about the value of the basic life. They remind me that every person in this world is a child of God and deserving of His love. And as I give, I receive their blessing too. There is a man that lives there who, at first glance, seems to be oblivious to me being there or even to participate in a church service. Yet, every time, after the service, when I go around shaking hands or touching a shoulder, he responds. And I know it was of value for him to be there and for me to have been there.
What I am saying, and I think this is what Jesus wants us to know, is that the soil that exists in our heart is ours to cultivate. God does not make it difficult for us to receive the seed of His unconditional love. What makes it difficult for us to make it grow is whether we cultivate our soil or not. Faith does not grow by itself. Although God will make the seed grow, this growth is dependent upon our cultivation and feeding of the soil. And this is all about putting into practice what we hear.
To grow in faith then, is a matter of simple belief, hard work and more hard work. But as a farmer enjoys the yield of their work, so do we when we not only put our trust in God but put that trust to work – actually believing that He provides, guides, and loves as we love, live and think the way Jesus has taught us to. And that is the secret that Jesus revealed in this parable.
Our faith will not grow through knowledge of God alone. It can only grow by practicing what we learn from Him.
17 July 2011
One of the comments that I have often heard in the 25 years that I have been in the professional ministry is this: “How can I read the Bible so that it can make sense to me?” In other words, many people shy away from reading what is in the Bible because they are afraid they will not be able to understand what it says. Maybe you are finding yourself in that category. Relax, because you are not alone.
One day, Jesus was teaching people by the lakeside and He told the following parable. I read it last week and I will read it again, so that it is fresh in our memory. “‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen (Mark 4: 1-9 NRSV)!’”
To us, maybe this parable is clear but to Jesus’ closes friends, it certainly wasn’t. As Jesus was teaching, it would appear that they were feeling more and more in the dark. What was Jesus really talking about? What were these things He was talking about, trying to explain what the Kingdom of God was like?
So, “When Jesus was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that “they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven (Mark 4: 10- 12 NRSV).”
Jesus answer is a quotation from the prophet Isaiah (6:9-10). When I first read these words and thought about them, it would seem that God is keeping people in the dark on purpose. To me, that doesn’t make sense. It would be like my parents talking English to each other. I grew up in a French speaking home, both my parents from French speaking parents, grand-parents and so on. But any time my parents wanted to say something that they didn’t want us to hear or to know about, they spoke English to each other. It used to frustrate me. As much as I would plead for them to tell me what they had said to each other, they wouldn’t. Many times they would simply say,” you’ll see.”
Is God speaking a different language so that some people won’t understand Him? Given the generosity of His sowing, this does not make sense. How can God, the sower of the Good News, spread the seed so generously and liberally without paying any attention to where it may land, give messages that cannot be understood? Why spread the seed if is serves no purpose? Let’s see what Jesus answered his friends.
“ And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. The first are the on-the- path-people where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the rocky- ground-people: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are those among- the- thorns- people: these are the ones, who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. And these are the good- soil- people: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold (Mark 4: 10- 20 NRSV).’”
Nowhere in Jesus’ explanation of the parable does he mention that people don’t understand the Word. Nowhere does He say that the message of the parable is hidden and God purposely hides the message of the Good News from anyone. It seems to be quite the opposite. People hear and people understand. It is what they do with the message that makes the difference.
What Jesus is driving at is this. When the hearer prepares the soil of their hearts properly, their heats, their souls will be fertile. They will produce fruits of the kingdom. However, those who do not have their soil prepared properly will not produce fruit. In fact the Word of God will wither away and die.
Jesus first points out to those who hear but their hearts are so hardened to God that they simply will not allow themselves to believe. They believe what they believe and that is that. Nothing and no one will ever change their minds on the subject. Those of us who have children might remember when they were little, maybe two or three years old. When they have something in mind, nothing can distract them. When a full blown tantrum arises it simply has to run its course. Jesus says that the on-the-path people live so much in the darkness that Satan comes and takes away the seed of Good News as if it never been planted.
Jesus then discusses those who hear the word, receive it, start to grow, but forget to continue to cultivate their soil and enrich it. As soon as hardship arises, their faith weakens. Their trust in God waivers until fear and anxiety takes over and they no longer trust in God. Mark’s listeners would know people like that because they lived in an atmosphere of persecution. Many people had heard the Good News of God and made the decision to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. But as the Romans made their lives difficult and as non followers of Jesus made fun of them and pointed their fingers at them from being different, they let go of their decision and went back to the way they were before.
Indeed, the soil of our hearts needs to be cultivated and enriched if our faith is to grow. Otherwise, at the sight of hardship, we will refuse to believe that God provides. Circumstances will want to tell us that He does not and we will believe that He cannot. In the midst of adversity, believing in God is difficult. Faith requires roots.
The thirds description that Jesus gives is the person who hears the Good News, is interested by it, but gets distracted by life. They really love what they have and the lure of what else they may possess that they let go of the Good News. They only think of the moment or of the immediacy of life. They don’t think of life from an eternal perspective. All they have and will ever have is here or will be here. There is nothing on the other side of this life. And if there is, they are not really concerned about it. I suppose one could say their motto is “Seize the moment.” Perhaps they are the people who hear Jesus saying “Count the cost of following me” and do so, deciding that the cost of following Jesus and living in God’s kingdom is too expansive on this side of life.
The last group of people Jesus mentions are the good- soil people. They are the people who hear the Good News of God and put it in practice. And as they do so, they discover that their faith grows stronger. And the stronger their faith is, the better they are at putting into practice what they hear, the more they understand what Jesus meant by His words.
All week long last week at our VBS, we talked about how upside down God’s Kingdom is. While most people put themselves first, in God’s Kingdom, it is God who is First. While most people put their wants and their desires first, in God’s kingdom, we put other’s needs first. To cultivate good soil for the seed of the Good News is to work on our trust of God.
I told the children last week that the number one thing that God desires for us is that we trust Him – not partially, but fully. This means that I will trust that He will give me what I need for life. I will trust that come what may, He will be there for me. This means that even if I don’t understand my circumstance I will trust that He has not abandoned me.
To trust God, it also implies that I believe in the direction He gives me for living. It implies that I trust his rules for living are the right ones, even if they are different from the ones my society believes. For example, our world tells us that to make it in the world we need all kinds of resources and education. Not that education and resources are bad or not necessary, but that is not what we need to make it in life. I have know people who had more resources and education than they knew what to do with. Still they were not content with life. They keep looking for more. And I have known people who have very little, financially and education, yet, they are the most secure, the most joyful people I have met. Why? It is because they have discovered the secret of life in God. And they cultivate the trust they have in God.
Cultivating the soil that is in our heart requires that we trust in God. And as I trust God, I can allow Him to use me to seed those around me. I seed other people by thinking of them before I think of myself. I think of the resources that I have been given and instead of seeing them as my reward for a job well done, as see them as a gift to be shared. You see, I am nothing more than a steward, as custodian of the resources given to me. I understand that God gives me so that I can give back. He gives me time that I use not just for my endeavours but for others too. He gives me talents in various areas for the purpose of using them to His glory. He has given me life to be a blessing to those around me.
I often reflect when I go to Evergreen to lead a worship service there, about the resident. Many don’t seem to be aware of their surroundings anymore. It would be easy for me to say how terrible of an ordeal this is. What possible purpose could there be in life like that? And I am brought back to the gift they give me. They allow me to love unconditionally. They allow me to learn about patience and about the value of the basic life. They remind me that every person in this world is a child of God and deserving of His love. And as I give, I receive their blessing too. There is a man that lives there who, at first glance, seems to be oblivious to me being there or even to participate in a church service. Yet, every time, after the service, when I go around shaking hands or touching a shoulder, he responds. And I know it was of value for him to be there and for me to have been there.
What I am saying, and I think this is what Jesus wants us to know, is that the soil that exists in our heart is ours to cultivate. God does not make it difficult for us to receive the seed of His unconditional love. What makes it difficult for us to make it grow is whether we cultivate our soil or not. Faith does not grow by itself. Although God will make the seed grow, this growth is dependent upon our cultivation and feeding of the soil. And this is all about putting into practice what we hear.
To grow in faith then, is a matter of simple belief, hard work and more hard work. But as a farmer enjoys the yield of their work, so do we when we not only put our trust in God but put that trust to work – actually believing that He provides, guides, and loves as we love, live and think the way Jesus has taught us to. And that is the secret that Jesus revealed in this parable.
Our faith will not grow through knowledge of God alone. It can only grow by practicing what we learn from Him.
True Generosity
Mark 4: 1- 9
10 July 2011
The parable of the sower – a well known and often told story found in three of the four gospels. There is much to say about this story Jesus told to those who were with Him that day. But before I say anything about it, let me read it to you, as Mark understood it.
“Again [Jesus] began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’”
I will continue on the rest of the story next week, because Jesus actually gave an interpretation to what He said. But this week, I want to focus on one aspect of the parable, and that is, the sower.
I don’t know how many farmers you know that purposely send seed on rocky paths, rocky grounds and unprepared fields? I don’t really know any. Of course, you’re bound to have some seed that falls in the wrong place, but most of it goes where it is intended to go. It seems that in this story, there is an equal amount of seed that is spread everywhere, even if it is known that the seed will not produce anything.
I was walking in a field a few weeks ago and I can attest that the seed was planted in the right place. The corn was growing inside the boundary of the field and there was none growing on the rocky path and none on the edges where grass was growing. Mind you, back in Jesus’ days, there were no mechanical equipment to seed fields. Still, even through broadcasting the seed by hands. One would be careful to sow where the seed will grow best.
So why would the sower be so indiscriminate in his sowing? Could it be that he didn’t care where the seed would fall because he believed that the seed has as much chance to grow in the path as in the prepared field?
Of course, when Jesus told this parable, His hearers knew He was either talking about Himself as the sower, or He was talking about God as the sower. Although the sower holds the smallest part in this story, His role is nonetheless an important one. It speaks of His generosity and indiscriminate sowing. No matter how the seed will respond to the soil condition, the seed is spread. No matter what the soil looks like, the seed is spread.
This reminds me of what Jesus said at another time: God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5: 45). God treats everyone the same on this side of heaven. His love, His care, His Word and His providence is available to anyone and everyone. He does not look at someone and say, “I’m not so sure that you like me, so I won’t be kind to you today.” Neither does he look upon some people and says, “I don’t like the look of you so you better not expect anything from me, ever.” He doesn’t say either, “I can’t trust you because you’ve hurt me before, so I’m just going to ignore you.” No, God keeps giving and giving without counting. He gives indiscriminately. Whether we are a terrorist or a church goer, whether we are a Christians, a Muslim a Hindu, whether we are a clean living person or a hardened criminal, God offers His same love, His same offer of salvation and transformation. I know that for us humans, this is hard to understand, let alone believe. But God is God.
The other thing in this parable that concerns the sower, is that the original people who read or heard the Gospel according to Mark knew that the sower was not only God and Jesus. They knew that the sower also meant them. For they too were now entrusted with God’s message of Good News. They realised that it was also their duty to scatter the seed indiscriminately. Mark wants you to know that you are a sower too.
This week, this is what we will be doing at our church. We will sow the seed of God’s upside down kingdom to the children God will entrust us with. I trust that you will partner with those who will be here with the children by praying for them and that you will also pray for the children themselves and their families.
This morning, you will also sow seeds of a different kind as you search for God’s will for this congregation. In a few moments, you will be introduced to a candidate for the position of Associate Pastor of Children and Youth. As you listen to him do so prayerfully to see if this is indeed the person you believe God has sent to nurture the children, youth and their families that God entrusts us with.
May God bless our sower and may he stir us to continue the spreading of His Good News wherever we are.
10 July 2011
The parable of the sower – a well known and often told story found in three of the four gospels. There is much to say about this story Jesus told to those who were with Him that day. But before I say anything about it, let me read it to you, as Mark understood it.
“Again [Jesus] began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’”
I will continue on the rest of the story next week, because Jesus actually gave an interpretation to what He said. But this week, I want to focus on one aspect of the parable, and that is, the sower.
I don’t know how many farmers you know that purposely send seed on rocky paths, rocky grounds and unprepared fields? I don’t really know any. Of course, you’re bound to have some seed that falls in the wrong place, but most of it goes where it is intended to go. It seems that in this story, there is an equal amount of seed that is spread everywhere, even if it is known that the seed will not produce anything.
I was walking in a field a few weeks ago and I can attest that the seed was planted in the right place. The corn was growing inside the boundary of the field and there was none growing on the rocky path and none on the edges where grass was growing. Mind you, back in Jesus’ days, there were no mechanical equipment to seed fields. Still, even through broadcasting the seed by hands. One would be careful to sow where the seed will grow best.
So why would the sower be so indiscriminate in his sowing? Could it be that he didn’t care where the seed would fall because he believed that the seed has as much chance to grow in the path as in the prepared field?
Of course, when Jesus told this parable, His hearers knew He was either talking about Himself as the sower, or He was talking about God as the sower. Although the sower holds the smallest part in this story, His role is nonetheless an important one. It speaks of His generosity and indiscriminate sowing. No matter how the seed will respond to the soil condition, the seed is spread. No matter what the soil looks like, the seed is spread.
This reminds me of what Jesus said at another time: God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5: 45). God treats everyone the same on this side of heaven. His love, His care, His Word and His providence is available to anyone and everyone. He does not look at someone and say, “I’m not so sure that you like me, so I won’t be kind to you today.” Neither does he look upon some people and says, “I don’t like the look of you so you better not expect anything from me, ever.” He doesn’t say either, “I can’t trust you because you’ve hurt me before, so I’m just going to ignore you.” No, God keeps giving and giving without counting. He gives indiscriminately. Whether we are a terrorist or a church goer, whether we are a Christians, a Muslim a Hindu, whether we are a clean living person or a hardened criminal, God offers His same love, His same offer of salvation and transformation. I know that for us humans, this is hard to understand, let alone believe. But God is God.
The other thing in this parable that concerns the sower, is that the original people who read or heard the Gospel according to Mark knew that the sower was not only God and Jesus. They knew that the sower also meant them. For they too were now entrusted with God’s message of Good News. They realised that it was also their duty to scatter the seed indiscriminately. Mark wants you to know that you are a sower too.
This week, this is what we will be doing at our church. We will sow the seed of God’s upside down kingdom to the children God will entrust us with. I trust that you will partner with those who will be here with the children by praying for them and that you will also pray for the children themselves and their families.
This morning, you will also sow seeds of a different kind as you search for God’s will for this congregation. In a few moments, you will be introduced to a candidate for the position of Associate Pastor of Children and Youth. As you listen to him do so prayerfully to see if this is indeed the person you believe God has sent to nurture the children, youth and their families that God entrusts us with.
May God bless our sower and may he stir us to continue the spreading of His Good News wherever we are.
Are You In or Out?
Mark 3: 31- 34
3 July 2011
“Then Jesus went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And Jesus called them to him, and spoke to them in parables. ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
‘Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but who ever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they said, ‘He had an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘You mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3: 19b- 34).’”
This is such busy passage that I decided to split it in two. I said last week that there is a common thread in this event and the thread is really a question. What do we make of Jesus? Last week I focused on Jesus pronouncement that all sins and blasphemies are forgivable except for the one against the Holy Spirit. I said that this blasphemy is a total rejection of God in Christ. Indeed, when someone denies that God could possibly be in Jesus, it is to deny who God is and what He can do.
This week I want to focus on Jesus’ family. As I mentioned last week, Jesus’ mother and his brothers thought He was out of His mind. He had gone insane, not eating, not looking after Himself and making the religious authority upset. They – and they should know – had pronounced Him to be nothing but the devil himself. It goes to reason that they wanted to take him away to save him from himself.
But as they arrived to the house where Jesus was healing exorcising and teaching, they couldn’t get in. There were too many people there. So they were stuck outside. I think the imagery of Jesus’ mother and brother standing outside the house, unable to get in, is more than just physical. I think Mark wants us to know that because of what his family thought He was. And because they believed God was not in Him they now stood outside of a relationship with Him. This is quite something to think that Jesus’ own family was now on the outside because of their unbelief that He was God’s very Son.
As they were unable to enter the house, they sent word to Jesus that his family wanted to see him. What Jesus answers is even more disturbing. “My mother and brothers are looking for me? What are you talking about my family is looking for me? You who do the will of God are my mother and brothers.”
I have often been troubled by this passage. How can Jesus disown His own family – his own mother and brothers? What had they done that was so terrible that He would reject them? The answer, I am afraid is as simple as it is distressing. He disowned them because they didn’t believe who he was.
I say this is distressing because if he can quickly disown his own mother and brothers, can the same happen to me? I know the answer, and I think you do too. He can. No matter what we wish the answer to be, this event clearly shows what it takes to be in the house – or the kingdom -- and part of the family. It takes belief.
In order to be part of the kingdom of God -- and part of God’s family we have to believe that God did indeed send Jesus and that He is who He says He is. That is the first fundamental step into His family. It is not doing good things. It is not being a good person. It is not to living a good and honest life, not cheating others. It is not being kind to others. The very first step into God’s family and his kingdom is faith. It is belief that God is at work in the world and part of that work is Jesus, the Christ.
But that is not to say that this is the end of the story. This is not to mean that this is all there is for us to be part of the kingdom. There is an “and” – and it is a large one at that. The “and” of the believe is to do God’s will. It is to put into practice our faith.
Faith tells us that God can be trusted to provide. Do we really trust Him to do that? Faith tells us that what we need above all for our lives is a healthy relationship with God. Do seek to foster that relationship through spending time with God, either in prayer or meditation? Faith tells us that God wants us to live a certain way to foster our relationship with Him. Do we seek to find out how He wants us to live and then put what we learn into practice? Do we love, care, forgive, and bring healing, peace and justice the way God does? Or do we have other priorities that take over?
Notwithstanding the fact that we remain broken human beings thus susceptible to fail, is it our priority to live with God and for God? That is what faith is all about. It is the commitment to follow God – and Jesus. But faith is not enough by itself. If we are committed to God, then does it show in the way we live, in the choices we make and in the things we do? If it does, then Jesus gives us a clear assurance. We are in.
I know this is a rather terse statement to make, but I sincerely believe that this is exactly what Jesus is saying through his mother and brothers. They stood outside because not only did they not believe in who He was, they did not follow Him either. And I think that Mark is pushing the point further by making sure those who read his gospel see where Mary and her other sons stood. They stood outside the house.
Once again, Mark asks: Where do you stand when it comes to Jesus? Are you in or are you standing outside? The decision can only be yours.
3 July 2011
“Then Jesus went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And Jesus called them to him, and spoke to them in parables. ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
‘Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but who ever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they said, ‘He had an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘You mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3: 19b- 34).’”
This is such busy passage that I decided to split it in two. I said last week that there is a common thread in this event and the thread is really a question. What do we make of Jesus? Last week I focused on Jesus pronouncement that all sins and blasphemies are forgivable except for the one against the Holy Spirit. I said that this blasphemy is a total rejection of God in Christ. Indeed, when someone denies that God could possibly be in Jesus, it is to deny who God is and what He can do.
This week I want to focus on Jesus’ family. As I mentioned last week, Jesus’ mother and his brothers thought He was out of His mind. He had gone insane, not eating, not looking after Himself and making the religious authority upset. They – and they should know – had pronounced Him to be nothing but the devil himself. It goes to reason that they wanted to take him away to save him from himself.
But as they arrived to the house where Jesus was healing exorcising and teaching, they couldn’t get in. There were too many people there. So they were stuck outside. I think the imagery of Jesus’ mother and brother standing outside the house, unable to get in, is more than just physical. I think Mark wants us to know that because of what his family thought He was. And because they believed God was not in Him they now stood outside of a relationship with Him. This is quite something to think that Jesus’ own family was now on the outside because of their unbelief that He was God’s very Son.
As they were unable to enter the house, they sent word to Jesus that his family wanted to see him. What Jesus answers is even more disturbing. “My mother and brothers are looking for me? What are you talking about my family is looking for me? You who do the will of God are my mother and brothers.”
I have often been troubled by this passage. How can Jesus disown His own family – his own mother and brothers? What had they done that was so terrible that He would reject them? The answer, I am afraid is as simple as it is distressing. He disowned them because they didn’t believe who he was.
I say this is distressing because if he can quickly disown his own mother and brothers, can the same happen to me? I know the answer, and I think you do too. He can. No matter what we wish the answer to be, this event clearly shows what it takes to be in the house – or the kingdom -- and part of the family. It takes belief.
In order to be part of the kingdom of God -- and part of God’s family we have to believe that God did indeed send Jesus and that He is who He says He is. That is the first fundamental step into His family. It is not doing good things. It is not being a good person. It is not to living a good and honest life, not cheating others. It is not being kind to others. The very first step into God’s family and his kingdom is faith. It is belief that God is at work in the world and part of that work is Jesus, the Christ.
But that is not to say that this is the end of the story. This is not to mean that this is all there is for us to be part of the kingdom. There is an “and” – and it is a large one at that. The “and” of the believe is to do God’s will. It is to put into practice our faith.
Faith tells us that God can be trusted to provide. Do we really trust Him to do that? Faith tells us that what we need above all for our lives is a healthy relationship with God. Do seek to foster that relationship through spending time with God, either in prayer or meditation? Faith tells us that God wants us to live a certain way to foster our relationship with Him. Do we seek to find out how He wants us to live and then put what we learn into practice? Do we love, care, forgive, and bring healing, peace and justice the way God does? Or do we have other priorities that take over?
Notwithstanding the fact that we remain broken human beings thus susceptible to fail, is it our priority to live with God and for God? That is what faith is all about. It is the commitment to follow God – and Jesus. But faith is not enough by itself. If we are committed to God, then does it show in the way we live, in the choices we make and in the things we do? If it does, then Jesus gives us a clear assurance. We are in.
I know this is a rather terse statement to make, but I sincerely believe that this is exactly what Jesus is saying through his mother and brothers. They stood outside because not only did they not believe in who He was, they did not follow Him either. And I think that Mark is pushing the point further by making sure those who read his gospel see where Mary and her other sons stood. They stood outside the house.
Once again, Mark asks: Where do you stand when it comes to Jesus? Are you in or are you standing outside? The decision can only be yours.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
This Satan Business
Mark 3: 19b – 30
26 June 2011
After a three week break, it is time for us to return to Galilee. When we left there last time, Jesus had just selected his close associates, the ones who would be responsible to spread the word of the Good News after Jesus was to leave, the apostles.
We rejoin him today, in a house, and as usual, there is a capacity crowd.
“Then Jesus went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And Jesus called them to him, and spoke to them in parables. ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
‘Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but who ever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they said, ‘He had an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘You mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of the God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3: 19b- 34).’”
There is a lot of substance in this story. However, I think that there is a thread that holds it all together and that is how I’m going to approach this event. Because there is so much involved here, I will pursue the theme next week also. The thread in this story is really a question. Who is Jesus to you? That is the question Mark asks to the crowd, to Jesus’ family and to the scribes. And indirectly, he asks us, the hearer of this gospel, what our thoughts are.
There is no doubt that Jesus never left people indifferent. We have a proof of that in this passage. And still today, Jesus does not leave people indifferent. That, I think, is because he continues to ask, ‘Who do you think I am?”
Let's see how the players in this event thought of Jesus. The crowd that was in the house was, by all account, neither for nor against Jesus. The crowd was simply interested. People wanted to hear Jesus. They wanted to be healed. They wanted their demons to be cast out. They wanted to be near him to see what was going on. It would seem that for the most part, the crowd had not committed itself one way of another. For most people in the house Jesus was a powerful man who had some amazing abilities and had very interesting and authoritative things to say. They simply were attracted to Jesus. But at least, they were inside the house.
Jesus’ family, for their part, were on the outside. We'll see this more in detail next week. For Jesus mother and brother, Jesus was a person who had something seriously wrong with him. He no longer was looking after himself – unable to eat, unable to find peace, unable even to be alone. They had to grab him and restrain him in order to protect him from himself and quick. I will say more about Jesus’ family next week.
For the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, the capital and the seat of the Jewish religion, Jesus was a possessed man – possessed not by a low ranking demon but the master of the house himself, Beelzebub, also known as Satan. As they watched Jesus casting out demons out of people, people they understood to be deserving of the punishment they received, they simply could not comprehend that God would do such a thing. If anything, Jesus' powers were from the devil himself to confuse people and lead them astray. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was a wolf pretending to be a sheep. He was the devil disguising himself as a shepherd. The scribes could not have that happening on their watch. Jesus was nothing more than a charlatan who should be stopped.
This thought that Jesus was understood to be Beelzebul in person got Him hot under the collar. He called the scribes in so they could hear and see what He had to say. Looking them in the eye, I’m sure, He told them three quick lessons.
First, He said that if He were Satan, then the evil kingdom was falling apart. A kingdom that is fighting itself is nothing less than a civil war. And a civil war destroys a nation, if not completely, it greatly weakens it. The Scribes could certainly remember from their history what happened to Israel at the end of Solomon’s reign. There was a civil war when different faction tried to seize power. The result was the division of Israel in two: the southern kingdom, called Judah, and the northern kingdom called Israel. And the two even fought wars years later. Would Satan willingly and purposefully do this to himself?
The second point Jesus made was that if a house was divided, then how could it stand? Here Jesus is not speaking about a physical house but about a dynasty. He is referring to a prominent or a royal family. He remarks that if a dynasty is fighting among itself that it will weaken that family, perhaps even to the point of collapse. The scribes would most likely remember that this is what happened to the high priesthood less than one hundred years before when two brothers fought for the position. The result was the invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans to bring back order and peace. Was there internal fighting in Satan’s family? Is this what the scribes were insinuating? Of course it wasn’t. The scribes certainly would not argue that one. So what was happening to the demonic realm then?
This is exactly what the third point was about. If Satan was not fighting himself, if the evil was being fought off, then the fighting came from outside. There was someone who was stronger that was having the upper hand. Although the English does not reflect this, expert think that the name Beelzebul means the lord of the house. Thus Satan is the lord of the house. This explains why Jesus talks about a house in His third point. He is saying that someone is stronger than the lord of the house. And that someone can only be one person: God. He is the only one who can tie up Satan and get rid of the demons possessing people.
Then Jesus makes this formidable statement: “Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but who ever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.’
What Jesus is saying is very important. All manner of sins, all manners of blasphemies can be forgiven, except for one. Only one sin can never be forgiven and that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. From what I have read, sins can be interpreted as doing wrong towards others. A sin, in this context, is breaking a relationship, a trust with another person. Blasphemy is something done against God. It is going against His will, His guidance. It is the breach of our relationship with Him. It is not uttering or saying a bad word or using God’s name in vain – although this certainly would hurt God’s feelings for sure. Blasphemy is more than that. It is our actions, our thoughts, our decisions which go against what we know God would want for and from us.
All of these things are forgivable Jesus says. They all are, that is, except for one. And that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
What on earth is that, you may wonder. Does this mean that when I swear using God’s name – or Jesus’ name, I am an eternally condemned person? Does this mean if I wilfully do something that I know God does not agree with that I am doomed?
Mark gives us a clue as to what Jesus meant by His words. “‘Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they said, ‘He had an unclean spirit.’” Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is to deny that Jesus could possibly be God as He claimed to be.
“To suggest that Jesus’ authority over demons comes from the prince of all evil spirits is to deny the presence of the Holy Spirit of God. This is eternal sin. When the presence of the Spirit of God in Jesus is denied, how can God forgive? It is unforgivable to claim that the Holy Spirit of God is an unclean spirit because those making such a claim place themselves outside the domain of the all-forgiving God. They manifest an attitude of mind so fixed and obstinate that it forms a permanent obstacle between God and man (Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark p. 83).”
To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to deny God and His presence in the world and in Jesus. It is very serious. And that is the accusation Jesus is making toward the scribes. They were denying that Jesus was who He said He was. They were stating that what He was doing was through the power of Satan. They were saying that Jesus was evil.
Is this true that Jesus was evil? Is it true that Jesus was insane? These are the question that Mark is asking. Mark proclaims that Jesus is the son of God, inhabited by the Sprit of God, able to do miracles and having all the authority that belongs to God himself. Mark proclaims that Jesus is the stronger one, that He can, by His presence and will, eliminate evil and darkness. No one else can eradicate evil the way Jesus does. No one can because only God himself can triumph over evil.
Mark wants to know: Do you believe this to be true? He does – and I do too. What do you make of Jesus?
26 June 2011
After a three week break, it is time for us to return to Galilee. When we left there last time, Jesus had just selected his close associates, the ones who would be responsible to spread the word of the Good News after Jesus was to leave, the apostles.
We rejoin him today, in a house, and as usual, there is a capacity crowd.
“Then Jesus went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And Jesus called them to him, and spoke to them in parables. ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
‘Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but who ever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they said, ‘He had an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘You mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of the God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3: 19b- 34).’”
There is a lot of substance in this story. However, I think that there is a thread that holds it all together and that is how I’m going to approach this event. Because there is so much involved here, I will pursue the theme next week also. The thread in this story is really a question. Who is Jesus to you? That is the question Mark asks to the crowd, to Jesus’ family and to the scribes. And indirectly, he asks us, the hearer of this gospel, what our thoughts are.
There is no doubt that Jesus never left people indifferent. We have a proof of that in this passage. And still today, Jesus does not leave people indifferent. That, I think, is because he continues to ask, ‘Who do you think I am?”
Let's see how the players in this event thought of Jesus. The crowd that was in the house was, by all account, neither for nor against Jesus. The crowd was simply interested. People wanted to hear Jesus. They wanted to be healed. They wanted their demons to be cast out. They wanted to be near him to see what was going on. It would seem that for the most part, the crowd had not committed itself one way of another. For most people in the house Jesus was a powerful man who had some amazing abilities and had very interesting and authoritative things to say. They simply were attracted to Jesus. But at least, they were inside the house.
Jesus’ family, for their part, were on the outside. We'll see this more in detail next week. For Jesus mother and brother, Jesus was a person who had something seriously wrong with him. He no longer was looking after himself – unable to eat, unable to find peace, unable even to be alone. They had to grab him and restrain him in order to protect him from himself and quick. I will say more about Jesus’ family next week.
For the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, the capital and the seat of the Jewish religion, Jesus was a possessed man – possessed not by a low ranking demon but the master of the house himself, Beelzebub, also known as Satan. As they watched Jesus casting out demons out of people, people they understood to be deserving of the punishment they received, they simply could not comprehend that God would do such a thing. If anything, Jesus' powers were from the devil himself to confuse people and lead them astray. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was a wolf pretending to be a sheep. He was the devil disguising himself as a shepherd. The scribes could not have that happening on their watch. Jesus was nothing more than a charlatan who should be stopped.
This thought that Jesus was understood to be Beelzebul in person got Him hot under the collar. He called the scribes in so they could hear and see what He had to say. Looking them in the eye, I’m sure, He told them three quick lessons.
First, He said that if He were Satan, then the evil kingdom was falling apart. A kingdom that is fighting itself is nothing less than a civil war. And a civil war destroys a nation, if not completely, it greatly weakens it. The Scribes could certainly remember from their history what happened to Israel at the end of Solomon’s reign. There was a civil war when different faction tried to seize power. The result was the division of Israel in two: the southern kingdom, called Judah, and the northern kingdom called Israel. And the two even fought wars years later. Would Satan willingly and purposefully do this to himself?
The second point Jesus made was that if a house was divided, then how could it stand? Here Jesus is not speaking about a physical house but about a dynasty. He is referring to a prominent or a royal family. He remarks that if a dynasty is fighting among itself that it will weaken that family, perhaps even to the point of collapse. The scribes would most likely remember that this is what happened to the high priesthood less than one hundred years before when two brothers fought for the position. The result was the invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans to bring back order and peace. Was there internal fighting in Satan’s family? Is this what the scribes were insinuating? Of course it wasn’t. The scribes certainly would not argue that one. So what was happening to the demonic realm then?
This is exactly what the third point was about. If Satan was not fighting himself, if the evil was being fought off, then the fighting came from outside. There was someone who was stronger that was having the upper hand. Although the English does not reflect this, expert think that the name Beelzebul means the lord of the house. Thus Satan is the lord of the house. This explains why Jesus talks about a house in His third point. He is saying that someone is stronger than the lord of the house. And that someone can only be one person: God. He is the only one who can tie up Satan and get rid of the demons possessing people.
Then Jesus makes this formidable statement: “Truly, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but who ever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.’
What Jesus is saying is very important. All manner of sins, all manners of blasphemies can be forgiven, except for one. Only one sin can never be forgiven and that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. From what I have read, sins can be interpreted as doing wrong towards others. A sin, in this context, is breaking a relationship, a trust with another person. Blasphemy is something done against God. It is going against His will, His guidance. It is the breach of our relationship with Him. It is not uttering or saying a bad word or using God’s name in vain – although this certainly would hurt God’s feelings for sure. Blasphemy is more than that. It is our actions, our thoughts, our decisions which go against what we know God would want for and from us.
All of these things are forgivable Jesus says. They all are, that is, except for one. And that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
What on earth is that, you may wonder. Does this mean that when I swear using God’s name – or Jesus’ name, I am an eternally condemned person? Does this mean if I wilfully do something that I know God does not agree with that I am doomed?
Mark gives us a clue as to what Jesus meant by His words. “‘Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they said, ‘He had an unclean spirit.’” Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is to deny that Jesus could possibly be God as He claimed to be.
“To suggest that Jesus’ authority over demons comes from the prince of all evil spirits is to deny the presence of the Holy Spirit of God. This is eternal sin. When the presence of the Spirit of God in Jesus is denied, how can God forgive? It is unforgivable to claim that the Holy Spirit of God is an unclean spirit because those making such a claim place themselves outside the domain of the all-forgiving God. They manifest an attitude of mind so fixed and obstinate that it forms a permanent obstacle between God and man (Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark p. 83).”
To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to deny God and His presence in the world and in Jesus. It is very serious. And that is the accusation Jesus is making toward the scribes. They were denying that Jesus was who He said He was. They were stating that what He was doing was through the power of Satan. They were saying that Jesus was evil.
Is this true that Jesus was evil? Is it true that Jesus was insane? These are the question that Mark is asking. Mark proclaims that Jesus is the son of God, inhabited by the Sprit of God, able to do miracles and having all the authority that belongs to God himself. Mark proclaims that Jesus is the stronger one, that He can, by His presence and will, eliminate evil and darkness. No one else can eradicate evil the way Jesus does. No one can because only God himself can triumph over evil.
Mark wants to know: Do you believe this to be true? He does – and I do too. What do you make of Jesus?
What This Man Knows
1 John 2:28- 3: 3
19 June 2011 (Fathers’ Day)
What do men know? Well, according to a retired minister’s granddaughter, they don’t know much. He recalled recently a conversation that took place between the two of them.
“Mom has been telling me about how babies are born and I’m never going to have children,” she said. “It hurts too badly.”
Thinking about what the best thing to say would be, the retired minister replied, “Yes, it does hurt. But the pain goes away and you’re left with this beautiful child and you decided it was worth it.”
The girl looked her grandfather in the eye. “You’re a man. What do you know?”
Indeed what do men know?
This man standing here may not know that much either, but there are a few things he knows and he’d like you to know them too. He knows who he is, whose he is, what he is here for and where he is going.
Before I tell you more about these things I know, I’d like to tell you why I know them. I know them because not only have I heard them said, but also because I have read about them in the Bible. And I know them not just because I have read them in the Bible but because deep in my heart, I have experienced them to be true.
Let me give you a sample of what I have read about this. I’ll read to you from John’s first letter.
“And now, children, stay with Christ. Live deeply in Christ. Then we’ll be ready for him when he appears, ready to receive him with open arms, with no cause for red-faced guilt or lame excuses when he arrives.
Once you’re convinced that he is right and righteous, you’ll recognise that all who practice righteousness are God’s children.
What marvellous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it – we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognise us or takes us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to. But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him -- and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own (1 John 2: 28- 3:3 The Message).”
In God, I have discovered who I am. I am His child. This means He made me and knows me even better than I know myself. That’s why I can confide in Him. I can tell Him even my deepest secret and He listens. And so often, either through other people or events that take place in my life, He directs me in the right path. And when I am unsure of how to proceed, I go to the Bible because I believe that it is like a letter He wrote to me so I would know what to base my decisions on and how to ground my values and life in something truly meaningful.
Without a relationship with God and without relying on Him I am more like a cork floating in water. How do I know what is right and wrong? How do I know what really matters in life? I really do need God’s input because He is my Father, my creator. He is worth listening to. After all if He made me and the world, who is better placed than Him to help me figure out how life should be lived? Not only that, but because I know that I belong to God, I know that I am accountable to Him. And He tells me that I am accountable to others as well. That means that what I say and what I do affects not only God but it affect other people too.
Human beings are made for relationships. We relate with our parents. We relate to our children. We relate with our brothers and sisters. We relate with our friends. We relate with our co-workers, our teachers and the list goes on. Unless we understand how we are meant to relate, we are bound to hurt each other and misunderstand one another. God gives us the perfect example of what a good and wholesome relationship is all about in Jesus. Through what He taught and what He did, He showed us what it means to truly love and care for others. He taught us that life is not primarily about ourselves and what we can get out of it but it is about others and what we can give to others.
When we know that we belong to God, then we realise that our purpose in life is to live for the good of others – not our own good. That is what Jesus did when He came to earth. Everything He said, everything He did was for our good and the good of those who lived in His day. Even his death was for our good.
The Bible talks about sin and how sin destroys our relationship – with God and with each other. I don’t know if you have ever hurt another person or if another person has hurt you – not necessarily physically but emotionally too. I know have hurt others and been hurt. One of the first things we often say or hear when that happens is: “I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?” Or we hear or say: “I’m sorry; I promise I’ll never do it again.” When we say those words, of course we mean them. But nothing we can do can undo the harm that was done. And when we promise never to do it again, sure enough, we do it again and our apologies start losing weight.
When we hear those words, we say to ourselves, “Sure you’re sorry but if you were really sorry you would put more effort into not hurting me.” We say to ourselves, “Sure you want to make it up to me, just don’t do it again.” And we keep on hurting each other.
God knows we keep on hurting Him by the way we treat each other, let alone how we treat Him. He knows there is nothing we can do on our own to make things better. I’m sure you know what happens when someone is convicted of a crime. They are punished. What do we do when someone does something wrong to us? We pay them back one way or another.
Well God says that is not really effective. That’s not how we are meant to live, being hurt and hurting back. Because a crime deserves punishment, God himself took the punishment in Jesus. He died – he was executed for all the wrong doings we may have and ever will do. And then God says:”There, the punishment is done. I now forgive you. Go and learn to do likewise. Forgive other people. Love then and care for them as freely as I love and care for you.”
That’s what I know life to be. It’s tough. It’s inconvenient. It’s humbling. But it is also freeing. I don’t have to carry a heavy baggage with me all the time because I know I am forgiven and with God’s help I can learn to forgive others.
As I learn to live this way, I know that if God were to come to earth today, I wouldn’t have to worry and wouldn’t have to be afraid. I’m not perfect but because I am His child, because I know I belong to Him and because I follow Jesus and seek to live the way He taught me and showed me to live, I am good.
Because I am good – not because of my actions but because I belong to God – then I don’t have to worry about my future. My future is in His hands. And I am not just talking about tomorrow. I am talking about eternity too. That removes a whole layer of anxiety in me. No matter what happens, whatever I may face in the future, I know that I will not face it alone. God will be with me. I will be with God. My soul is in good hands.
It’s true that I may not know much – after all I am a man! But these things I know. I am God’s child, belonging to Him, made for Him in such a way that I can love, forgive and care for others, seeking the good of others instead of just what is good for me. And because I know who I am, whose I am and what I am here for, I know where I am going. I am going to be with God today, tomorrow and for eternity.
Your Father in heaven wants you to know all that – And He has even more things to tell you about. Would you commit to know Him as He knows you? You couldn’t give Him a better Fathers’ Day present!
19 June 2011 (Fathers’ Day)
What do men know? Well, according to a retired minister’s granddaughter, they don’t know much. He recalled recently a conversation that took place between the two of them.
“Mom has been telling me about how babies are born and I’m never going to have children,” she said. “It hurts too badly.”
Thinking about what the best thing to say would be, the retired minister replied, “Yes, it does hurt. But the pain goes away and you’re left with this beautiful child and you decided it was worth it.”
The girl looked her grandfather in the eye. “You’re a man. What do you know?”
Indeed what do men know?
This man standing here may not know that much either, but there are a few things he knows and he’d like you to know them too. He knows who he is, whose he is, what he is here for and where he is going.
Before I tell you more about these things I know, I’d like to tell you why I know them. I know them because not only have I heard them said, but also because I have read about them in the Bible. And I know them not just because I have read them in the Bible but because deep in my heart, I have experienced them to be true.
Let me give you a sample of what I have read about this. I’ll read to you from John’s first letter.
“And now, children, stay with Christ. Live deeply in Christ. Then we’ll be ready for him when he appears, ready to receive him with open arms, with no cause for red-faced guilt or lame excuses when he arrives.
Once you’re convinced that he is right and righteous, you’ll recognise that all who practice righteousness are God’s children.
What marvellous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it – we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognise us or takes us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to. But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him -- and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own (1 John 2: 28- 3:3 The Message).”
In God, I have discovered who I am. I am His child. This means He made me and knows me even better than I know myself. That’s why I can confide in Him. I can tell Him even my deepest secret and He listens. And so often, either through other people or events that take place in my life, He directs me in the right path. And when I am unsure of how to proceed, I go to the Bible because I believe that it is like a letter He wrote to me so I would know what to base my decisions on and how to ground my values and life in something truly meaningful.
Without a relationship with God and without relying on Him I am more like a cork floating in water. How do I know what is right and wrong? How do I know what really matters in life? I really do need God’s input because He is my Father, my creator. He is worth listening to. After all if He made me and the world, who is better placed than Him to help me figure out how life should be lived? Not only that, but because I know that I belong to God, I know that I am accountable to Him. And He tells me that I am accountable to others as well. That means that what I say and what I do affects not only God but it affect other people too.
Human beings are made for relationships. We relate with our parents. We relate to our children. We relate with our brothers and sisters. We relate with our friends. We relate with our co-workers, our teachers and the list goes on. Unless we understand how we are meant to relate, we are bound to hurt each other and misunderstand one another. God gives us the perfect example of what a good and wholesome relationship is all about in Jesus. Through what He taught and what He did, He showed us what it means to truly love and care for others. He taught us that life is not primarily about ourselves and what we can get out of it but it is about others and what we can give to others.
When we know that we belong to God, then we realise that our purpose in life is to live for the good of others – not our own good. That is what Jesus did when He came to earth. Everything He said, everything He did was for our good and the good of those who lived in His day. Even his death was for our good.
The Bible talks about sin and how sin destroys our relationship – with God and with each other. I don’t know if you have ever hurt another person or if another person has hurt you – not necessarily physically but emotionally too. I know have hurt others and been hurt. One of the first things we often say or hear when that happens is: “I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?” Or we hear or say: “I’m sorry; I promise I’ll never do it again.” When we say those words, of course we mean them. But nothing we can do can undo the harm that was done. And when we promise never to do it again, sure enough, we do it again and our apologies start losing weight.
When we hear those words, we say to ourselves, “Sure you’re sorry but if you were really sorry you would put more effort into not hurting me.” We say to ourselves, “Sure you want to make it up to me, just don’t do it again.” And we keep on hurting each other.
God knows we keep on hurting Him by the way we treat each other, let alone how we treat Him. He knows there is nothing we can do on our own to make things better. I’m sure you know what happens when someone is convicted of a crime. They are punished. What do we do when someone does something wrong to us? We pay them back one way or another.
Well God says that is not really effective. That’s not how we are meant to live, being hurt and hurting back. Because a crime deserves punishment, God himself took the punishment in Jesus. He died – he was executed for all the wrong doings we may have and ever will do. And then God says:”There, the punishment is done. I now forgive you. Go and learn to do likewise. Forgive other people. Love then and care for them as freely as I love and care for you.”
That’s what I know life to be. It’s tough. It’s inconvenient. It’s humbling. But it is also freeing. I don’t have to carry a heavy baggage with me all the time because I know I am forgiven and with God’s help I can learn to forgive others.
As I learn to live this way, I know that if God were to come to earth today, I wouldn’t have to worry and wouldn’t have to be afraid. I’m not perfect but because I am His child, because I know I belong to Him and because I follow Jesus and seek to live the way He taught me and showed me to live, I am good.
Because I am good – not because of my actions but because I belong to God – then I don’t have to worry about my future. My future is in His hands. And I am not just talking about tomorrow. I am talking about eternity too. That removes a whole layer of anxiety in me. No matter what happens, whatever I may face in the future, I know that I will not face it alone. God will be with me. I will be with God. My soul is in good hands.
It’s true that I may not know much – after all I am a man! But these things I know. I am God’s child, belonging to Him, made for Him in such a way that I can love, forgive and care for others, seeking the good of others instead of just what is good for me. And because I know who I am, whose I am and what I am here for, I know where I am going. I am going to be with God today, tomorrow and for eternity.
Your Father in heaven wants you to know all that – And He has even more things to tell you about. Would you commit to know Him as He knows you? You couldn’t give Him a better Fathers’ Day present!
Friday, June 3, 2011
Are You Appointed?
Mark 3:13- 19
29 May 2011
Do you remember the days when, either in physical education or with your friend, you formed teams? There with be a large group and two people were picked as team leaders, usually the jocks. Then one by one, they would select their team. I greatly disliked it when teams were picked that way because I was always one of the last to be chosen. Until I reached high school, I was either the shortest or second shortest boy in my class. I didn’t play any organised sports except in the summer when I would go to my neighbourhood park for whatever activities were offered on that day. And even then, whenever we played tag or capture the flag – my all time favourite game – the teams were picked the usual way. I was one of the last picked.
This is probably why I was always self conscious about my athletic abilities. It wasn’t until I attended a cadet camp when I was 15 years old and then recommended to return the following year as a physical education instructor – yes that shocked me for sure – that I realised that I wasn’t as bad as I once thought.
Isn’t that amazing the ideas we form about ourselves because of something we heard or experienced in our childhood? It may have nothing to do with the truth or the facts, but it marks us in powerful ways.
Take God’s view of who you are for example. How do you see yourself from God’s perspective? Most of us can understand that God loves us. We have heard that often enough. Most of us can understand that God forgives us our sins. We have heard that enough too. But does that knowledge really sink deep within our hearts or do other, perhaps older messages, take precedence in our minds?
Do we see ourselves utterly dependent upon God or does the message of self-sufficiency so ingrained that we have a difficult understanding that we do need God in our lives? And what about the ability to do whatever we set our minds to do? Does this take over our capability of understanding and grasping what God’s will might be for our lives?
Can we really appreciate God’s call on our lives with all the messages we hear from the world and from our past?
This morning’s passage from the gospel according to Mark is another one of those difficult to preach passages as you will see. But I think that there is something very important for us to notice in Jesus’ selection of the twelve apostles. Let’s read the passage and then we’ll look at it in more detail to see the gem I think is hiding in there.
“Jesus went up to the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James, son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boarnerges, that is Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thadaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. Then he went home (Mark 3: 13- 19).”
Have you ever wondered why Jesus picked the people He did to be His apostles? Just venture out a guess. No one really knows why Jesus picked such a various group of people. We know a few of this motley crew.
We know that Simon, also called Peter, was a brother to Andrew and that James and John were brothers, all fishermen. If you wonder what boarnerges means, it is most likely a Greek transliteration of the words “sons of thunder.” Why Jesus nicknamed James and John sons of thunder, we are not sure. Did it have to do with temperament? Yet we know John through his gospel as a meditative, profound kind of person. I know I would label Peter more that way!
Philip is said to have come from Bethsaida. Incidentally, his name means “lover of horses.” Bartholomew’s name means son of Tholomaios. Thomas is identified as a twin in the gospel according to John but if this is the case, his twin is never mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, that we know of. James the son of Alphaeus is another unknown person, except that Levi, the tax collector we met earlier is also the son of an Alphaeus. Are they brothers? Then there is Thaddaeus whom Luke names Judas the son of James, probably his Jewish name. There is Simon the Cananaen whom Luke describes as being the Zealot. Zealots were a political party that considered itself revolutionary and super patriotic. They were known to be chauvinistic in their views. (i can only imagine how well he got along with Matthew the tax collector who represented everything the zealots hated!) Finally, there is the selection of the most infamous of them all, Judas Iscariot. It has been written that Iscariot may mean the man from Karioth, a village located in Judah. This would make him the only one of the twelve from that area of Palestine.
The only ones we really know well are Simon Peter, John, Thomas and Judas Iscariot. The rest are unknown, by and large. As a group, we have no idea what they did except that perhaps they were sent on a short term mission in the towns and villages before Jesus went to them. They didn’t seem to operate as a group until after Jesus’ ascension into heaven.
How interesting that Jesus picked mostly unknown people who were destined to remain unknown except for their names. Can this be sending us a message?
How many people does Jesus call who have been, are or are destined to become famous? Judging by the number of the apostles who became famous, the answer would be very few. Yet, does this mean that the others who were called had no significance? Does this mean they had not serious purpose? I don’t think so. If Jesus called them, it was He had a task for them to do, even if that task was going to be unknown to us and insignificant compared to people like Peter, John and Paul.
Another interesting thing is His choice of Judas Iscariot. Why would Jesus select someone who was going to betray Him? I think it is a cue that Jesus not only came to preach, heal and give an example. He came to be killed as the ultimate sacrifice. Dying on the cross was part of the purpose He came for. His death was not an accident nor was it unplanned.
So, choosing apostles that would not be known, that would live and work and serve in the shadows was on purpose. He did not demand more than what was planned. He knew the people He called. He knows us when He calls us. Whether we are destined to be famous or not, when He calls He knows what He is doing.
So what does Jesus ask us to do? He asked the apostles to partner with Him in His mission of spreading the Good News. He gave them authority over darkness, just like He had authority over it. We know that after He left, he gave them the Holy Spirit so they would receive the wisdom they needed to understand God’s will. This same Spirit is given to us too when we make the decision to follow.
I think that too often we underestimate what we have in Christ. We fail to trust that He know why He called us and why He wants us to partner with Him in spreading the Good News.
As I mentioned last week, two Fridays ago Janice and I went to see the Watoto choir from Uganda. This outreach to child soldiers and orphans and vulnerable women was started by Canadian missionary couple, Gary and Marilyn Skinner. They went to Kampala the capital of Uganda in 1982 to plant a church. Nine years later, out of compassion for the 2 million children who had been affected by war and disease, they began the Watoto child care ministry. In 1994, the children choir was founded and began to travel the world to raise awareness.
God had great plans for the Skinners and like you, I marvel at what they have been able to accomplish in Christ’s name. But they would be the first one to tell you that they are not alone in this endeavour. Countless others have come alongside of them. Some have come to provide financially. Some have come to provide to unceasing prayers. Some have come to work with the children. Some have come to look for orphans. Some have come to teach the children and young adults skills to help them become good, productive and skilled citizens. Few would know the names of these servants. But all are as important.
God thinks you have an important role to play in His kingdom too. We serve Him when we give to feed the hungry. We serve Him when we come alongside a person who needs a shoulder to cry on. We serve Him when we can give some direction to someone who is unsure where to turn or where to go. We serve Him we live through the hope that Christ has given us. We live in hope when we face terrific situations but don’t allow them to crush us.
We serve God when we are open with our feelings toward each other and are not afraid to receive help. We serve God when we are real, not pretending that everything is okay when it is not. We serve God when we pray for each other. We serve God when we come together in worship and fellowship. We serve God when we tame our tongues. We serve God when we develop the gifts He has given us and when we develop those fruits of the Spirit.
I also believe that we serve God when we work toward the greater good of our community, when we freely give of our time to make our community, our neighbourhood and our planet a better place.
I am not telling you anything new here. But I want to press the point that when God calls you to follow Him, we have no excuse not to do so. He has already equipped us for what He calls us for. His Spirit is with us to guide us. His Word is there to show us what it means to follow Jesus. Only fear and, dare I say, sin, keeps us away from answering His call.
What do you say to His call on your life?
29 May 2011
Do you remember the days when, either in physical education or with your friend, you formed teams? There with be a large group and two people were picked as team leaders, usually the jocks. Then one by one, they would select their team. I greatly disliked it when teams were picked that way because I was always one of the last to be chosen. Until I reached high school, I was either the shortest or second shortest boy in my class. I didn’t play any organised sports except in the summer when I would go to my neighbourhood park for whatever activities were offered on that day. And even then, whenever we played tag or capture the flag – my all time favourite game – the teams were picked the usual way. I was one of the last picked.
This is probably why I was always self conscious about my athletic abilities. It wasn’t until I attended a cadet camp when I was 15 years old and then recommended to return the following year as a physical education instructor – yes that shocked me for sure – that I realised that I wasn’t as bad as I once thought.
Isn’t that amazing the ideas we form about ourselves because of something we heard or experienced in our childhood? It may have nothing to do with the truth or the facts, but it marks us in powerful ways.
Take God’s view of who you are for example. How do you see yourself from God’s perspective? Most of us can understand that God loves us. We have heard that often enough. Most of us can understand that God forgives us our sins. We have heard that enough too. But does that knowledge really sink deep within our hearts or do other, perhaps older messages, take precedence in our minds?
Do we see ourselves utterly dependent upon God or does the message of self-sufficiency so ingrained that we have a difficult understanding that we do need God in our lives? And what about the ability to do whatever we set our minds to do? Does this take over our capability of understanding and grasping what God’s will might be for our lives?
Can we really appreciate God’s call on our lives with all the messages we hear from the world and from our past?
This morning’s passage from the gospel according to Mark is another one of those difficult to preach passages as you will see. But I think that there is something very important for us to notice in Jesus’ selection of the twelve apostles. Let’s read the passage and then we’ll look at it in more detail to see the gem I think is hiding in there.
“Jesus went up to the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James, son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boarnerges, that is Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thadaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. Then he went home (Mark 3: 13- 19).”
Have you ever wondered why Jesus picked the people He did to be His apostles? Just venture out a guess. No one really knows why Jesus picked such a various group of people. We know a few of this motley crew.
We know that Simon, also called Peter, was a brother to Andrew and that James and John were brothers, all fishermen. If you wonder what boarnerges means, it is most likely a Greek transliteration of the words “sons of thunder.” Why Jesus nicknamed James and John sons of thunder, we are not sure. Did it have to do with temperament? Yet we know John through his gospel as a meditative, profound kind of person. I know I would label Peter more that way!
Philip is said to have come from Bethsaida. Incidentally, his name means “lover of horses.” Bartholomew’s name means son of Tholomaios. Thomas is identified as a twin in the gospel according to John but if this is the case, his twin is never mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, that we know of. James the son of Alphaeus is another unknown person, except that Levi, the tax collector we met earlier is also the son of an Alphaeus. Are they brothers? Then there is Thaddaeus whom Luke names Judas the son of James, probably his Jewish name. There is Simon the Cananaen whom Luke describes as being the Zealot. Zealots were a political party that considered itself revolutionary and super patriotic. They were known to be chauvinistic in their views. (i can only imagine how well he got along with Matthew the tax collector who represented everything the zealots hated!) Finally, there is the selection of the most infamous of them all, Judas Iscariot. It has been written that Iscariot may mean the man from Karioth, a village located in Judah. This would make him the only one of the twelve from that area of Palestine.
The only ones we really know well are Simon Peter, John, Thomas and Judas Iscariot. The rest are unknown, by and large. As a group, we have no idea what they did except that perhaps they were sent on a short term mission in the towns and villages before Jesus went to them. They didn’t seem to operate as a group until after Jesus’ ascension into heaven.
How interesting that Jesus picked mostly unknown people who were destined to remain unknown except for their names. Can this be sending us a message?
How many people does Jesus call who have been, are or are destined to become famous? Judging by the number of the apostles who became famous, the answer would be very few. Yet, does this mean that the others who were called had no significance? Does this mean they had not serious purpose? I don’t think so. If Jesus called them, it was He had a task for them to do, even if that task was going to be unknown to us and insignificant compared to people like Peter, John and Paul.
Another interesting thing is His choice of Judas Iscariot. Why would Jesus select someone who was going to betray Him? I think it is a cue that Jesus not only came to preach, heal and give an example. He came to be killed as the ultimate sacrifice. Dying on the cross was part of the purpose He came for. His death was not an accident nor was it unplanned.
So, choosing apostles that would not be known, that would live and work and serve in the shadows was on purpose. He did not demand more than what was planned. He knew the people He called. He knows us when He calls us. Whether we are destined to be famous or not, when He calls He knows what He is doing.
So what does Jesus ask us to do? He asked the apostles to partner with Him in His mission of spreading the Good News. He gave them authority over darkness, just like He had authority over it. We know that after He left, he gave them the Holy Spirit so they would receive the wisdom they needed to understand God’s will. This same Spirit is given to us too when we make the decision to follow.
I think that too often we underestimate what we have in Christ. We fail to trust that He know why He called us and why He wants us to partner with Him in spreading the Good News.
As I mentioned last week, two Fridays ago Janice and I went to see the Watoto choir from Uganda. This outreach to child soldiers and orphans and vulnerable women was started by Canadian missionary couple, Gary and Marilyn Skinner. They went to Kampala the capital of Uganda in 1982 to plant a church. Nine years later, out of compassion for the 2 million children who had been affected by war and disease, they began the Watoto child care ministry. In 1994, the children choir was founded and began to travel the world to raise awareness.
God had great plans for the Skinners and like you, I marvel at what they have been able to accomplish in Christ’s name. But they would be the first one to tell you that they are not alone in this endeavour. Countless others have come alongside of them. Some have come to provide financially. Some have come to provide to unceasing prayers. Some have come to work with the children. Some have come to look for orphans. Some have come to teach the children and young adults skills to help them become good, productive and skilled citizens. Few would know the names of these servants. But all are as important.
God thinks you have an important role to play in His kingdom too. We serve Him when we give to feed the hungry. We serve Him when we come alongside a person who needs a shoulder to cry on. We serve Him when we can give some direction to someone who is unsure where to turn or where to go. We serve Him we live through the hope that Christ has given us. We live in hope when we face terrific situations but don’t allow them to crush us.
We serve God when we are open with our feelings toward each other and are not afraid to receive help. We serve God when we are real, not pretending that everything is okay when it is not. We serve God when we pray for each other. We serve God when we come together in worship and fellowship. We serve God when we tame our tongues. We serve God when we develop the gifts He has given us and when we develop those fruits of the Spirit.
I also believe that we serve God when we work toward the greater good of our community, when we freely give of our time to make our community, our neighbourhood and our planet a better place.
I am not telling you anything new here. But I want to press the point that when God calls you to follow Him, we have no excuse not to do so. He has already equipped us for what He calls us for. His Spirit is with us to guide us. His Word is there to show us what it means to follow Jesus. Only fear and, dare I say, sin, keeps us away from answering His call.
What do you say to His call on your life?
Anonymous Christians?
Mark 3: 7- 12
22 May 2011
It is more than 66 years ago now that the hostilities in Europe, known as World War Two have ended. On May 8, 1945, finally the people of Europe could breathe a sigh of relief and think about rebuilding their lives, let alone millions trying to rebuild their hones and towns.
Sailors, soldiers and airmen from around the world could start their journey home, although some were simply rerouted to the Japanese theatre of War which would not end until August 15, 1945. As serving and demobilised military personnel returned to their countries and neighbourhoods, stories were shared amongst those who served. (The stories were seldom shared with their families or those who did not see overseas service until much later.)They told of the places they had been, spoke of funny or strange things that may have happened in their travel. They spoke of their superiors and perhaps also of the friends they left behind. Some undoubtedly also told of the people of the opposite sex they met and families they boarded with.
But there were a few people who were never allowed to talk about what they did because their line of work was so secret that they vowed never to say anything. In Canada, those who worked in the fledgling radar field had such secrets, as those who worked in special operations as spies. I met one such person many years ago. She never revealed what she did until she was in a veteran’s nursing home in Ottawa, fifty years after risking her life on many missions mingling with German officers.
About two years ago, I read a fascinating book about a special American unit, composed of actors, painters and other related fields. Their task was to deceive the enemy in creating invisible soldiers. Air blown fake tanks and truck were created and parked in strategic places. All the sounds that an army could make were recorded in high fidelity and then projected toward the enemy to make them believe that a large formation was near them. Actors took to the radios and made believe that large military formations were giving and receiving orders for an imminent battle.
It was not well over fifty years later that the story could be told. Even the base where this secret unit had trained prior to going overseas had no record of them until a few years ago. Talk about keeping a secret. And then there is the story of these American Wrens who build a supercomputer, maintained it and fed it with information to discover after the war that what they had contributed to was the decoding of the German enigma machines. They too were sworn to secrecy after the war.
I can’t imagine being that easy to keep a secret for that long. But they believed it was for the good of the country and they did what they were told.
The gospel according to Mark is known for its call for secrecy. Time and again, Mark quotes Jesus as telling some people not to tell who He was or what He did. This morning’s passage is no different. Let’s read it together.
“Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Iduma, beyond the Jordan, and the region of tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so they would not crush him, for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But Jesus sternly ordered them not to make him known (Mark 3: 7- 12).”
The question has often been asked, “Why would Jesus forbid people to tell who He was?” Didn’t He come to be known? And if He forbade people not to tell, then why did so many people come to Him to see Him, listen to Him and touch Him? His secret was not a very well kept secret!
There are two approaches to this secrecy. Some say that Jesus used reversed psychology. What do you do when someone tells you a secret? I know some people have told me they would rather not know the secret because keeping it is so difficult. We like to tell others spicy news about others. If that was not true, all those celebrity magazines and television shows would have ceased to exist a long time ago. We simply like to spread the gossip. And we know from all the four gospels that Jesus did enough miracles and taught enough provocative parables to create much gossip. Even if He tried to stop it, people had to tell what they had seen, heard and experienced. And that may have been why Jesus told people to be quiet.
Bu there is another theory about this messianic secret as scholars call it. It was not so much that Jesus was trying to keep the lid on who He was. He was streamlining where the message was to go. If Jesus’ mission was to keep His presence secret, He failed miserably as this passage would show. But if His mission was to let those who were in need to know to discover Him and do His best to attenuate any opposition that would get in the way of the Good News to spread, then Jesus was more successful.
As we travel through the gospel according to Mark, we have met Jesus who hangs around sinners, forgives sins, removes evil spirits from people and heals even the untouchable. He has declared that He is the master of the Sabbath and even dared to heal on the Sabbath. All these things, to the religious person of His day, made no sense. If someone was sick, it was because they had done something wrong for which they were punished. They had committed some sin or other, or they parents or grandparents had. If someone was possessed of a demon, that person should not be approached. They were cursed, probably for who they were or what they had done. If a person was untouchable, they should be removed from the community, lest they contaminate others. And the Sabbath was reserved for rest and worship, nothing less, nothing more. Anyone who did more could not possibly be holy.
Can we really fault the religious leaders of the day when, upon witnessing Jesus disregard for the law of the Sabbath, decided that they must find a way to get rid of Jesus? They approached their nemesis, the Herodians. How interesting company one keeps in fighting a common adversary! The Pharisees, who despised the Romans because they were ungodly gentiles, aligned themselves with a political party that had very close ties to Rome. They had formed their own religious lines, rejected by the Pharisees and other orthodox Jews. They were called the Herodians because they were the party and perhaps the militia of Herod Antipas, the ruler appointed by Rome over Galilee.
Jesus’ mission was not to overthrow the Roman government as the Pharisees led the Herodians to believe. Jesus’ mission was not to do away with the Jewish Law. He came to free people from the wrongful interpretation of the Law God gave to His people through Moses. Over the centuries, religious lawyers had created a vast array of interpretations and descriptions of what God really wants from people and what make Him happy. These had become so burdensome that either one was super religious, as were the Pharisees, or one was a reject and lived in the shamed of feeling abandoned or rejected by God because of all the rule, demands and verdicts rendered by the religious Law.
How many of us, if we fall prey to sickness, or face a negative situation, see this as a punishment from God? I would venture to say that most of us do – especially when we pray for a reversal from the situation and it does not come. We figure that God must be punishing us for something we have done or said or left undone. When we feel that way, it is rather discouraging, wouldn’t you say? If God is our only hope and we feel that God is now against us, what hope is there?
This is the kind of thinking that Jesus came to undo. That is why he hung around “sinners” and the sick and the marginal people of his society. They needed to know that God cared and their situation had nothing to do with being unloved or being unlovable or because God was punishing them for some unknown sin. Bad things happen, to anyone – not necessarily for any purposes or reasons. We live in a world that is not perfect, that is in many ways and because of that, many of us have to suffer.
Yet, despite Jesus’ coming and despite His message of freedom and forgiveness, despite His death and resurrection, how many of us struggle with the issues of forgiveness and freedom that are ours through Him? How many of us publicly shy away of expressing our faith because we struggle with these issues? We say to ourselves that we are a poor example for a follower of Jesus so we would rather keep it hidden so that we are not judged on our poor performance. We quietly wonder if we are Christians at all. We wonder if Jesus’ life giving message is true.
There were no doubts in the mind of so many who pressed around Jesus when he was near the sea. They came from everywhere on the rumours about Jesus that had travelled in their direction. They went looking Jesus and found Him, most having their lives touched and transformed forever.
But we, who are two thousand years removed from this event look with wonder. If only we could see Jesus with our own eyes, touch his garment with our own hands. Then all our doubts and all our weakness would be removed. It wouldn’t be so hard to have faith and be people of faith. It wouldn’t be so tough to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
What we forget is that despite have seen Jesus, it was much tougher for His followers then than it is today. How many of us will die because of our faith? How many of them did?
No, Jesus early disciples did not keep His presence and His message a secret. They made it a point to spread the message of freedom and forgiveness they had received. Jesus told those who would provoke the authorities about the Good News to be quiet. His time to be killed had not arrived and they should not hasten it. He told those who might misunderstand His actions to be quiet so that false rumours would not spread faster than they already were.
But for the rest, there were no warnings; there were no injunction to be quiet. And the word spread. Has our lives been touched by Jesus somewhere along the journey of our lives, however long ago that may be? If you have encountered Him and made the decision to be one of His own, then know that you are a free person. You are free from your sins. You are free from thinking that God is indifferent to you., You are free from thinking you do not matter to god and that he can’t possibly love you because of your situation. It is simply not true. Christ died for you to prove it. He came for you – whether you are dealing with a setback in your life, whether you live with an health issue, whether your family is together or broken apart, whether you’re not sure where your life is heading or whether you are facing the end of your journey. You have been made free to life to the fullest of life you were made for.
There is nothing the evil spirits like better than to make us doubt the validity of God’s love or of our faith. Jesus doesn’t – and never has – wanted secret followers. To follow Jesus is to be out in the open because He is out in the open. It is to be strong in the belief that His spirit lives within us and will guide us on the right path. It is to live in the hope and the joy that we are free to be the persons God has meant us to be. We are not meant to be burdened by religious restrictions or fears of insignificance. We are freed by the grace brought to us by Jesus.
Where are you at this morning? Are living as a free person, freed by the Good News of Jesus and His life giving death and resurrection? What stops you from being free?
22 May 2011
It is more than 66 years ago now that the hostilities in Europe, known as World War Two have ended. On May 8, 1945, finally the people of Europe could breathe a sigh of relief and think about rebuilding their lives, let alone millions trying to rebuild their hones and towns.
Sailors, soldiers and airmen from around the world could start their journey home, although some were simply rerouted to the Japanese theatre of War which would not end until August 15, 1945. As serving and demobilised military personnel returned to their countries and neighbourhoods, stories were shared amongst those who served. (The stories were seldom shared with their families or those who did not see overseas service until much later.)They told of the places they had been, spoke of funny or strange things that may have happened in their travel. They spoke of their superiors and perhaps also of the friends they left behind. Some undoubtedly also told of the people of the opposite sex they met and families they boarded with.
But there were a few people who were never allowed to talk about what they did because their line of work was so secret that they vowed never to say anything. In Canada, those who worked in the fledgling radar field had such secrets, as those who worked in special operations as spies. I met one such person many years ago. She never revealed what she did until she was in a veteran’s nursing home in Ottawa, fifty years after risking her life on many missions mingling with German officers.
About two years ago, I read a fascinating book about a special American unit, composed of actors, painters and other related fields. Their task was to deceive the enemy in creating invisible soldiers. Air blown fake tanks and truck were created and parked in strategic places. All the sounds that an army could make were recorded in high fidelity and then projected toward the enemy to make them believe that a large formation was near them. Actors took to the radios and made believe that large military formations were giving and receiving orders for an imminent battle.
It was not well over fifty years later that the story could be told. Even the base where this secret unit had trained prior to going overseas had no record of them until a few years ago. Talk about keeping a secret. And then there is the story of these American Wrens who build a supercomputer, maintained it and fed it with information to discover after the war that what they had contributed to was the decoding of the German enigma machines. They too were sworn to secrecy after the war.
I can’t imagine being that easy to keep a secret for that long. But they believed it was for the good of the country and they did what they were told.
The gospel according to Mark is known for its call for secrecy. Time and again, Mark quotes Jesus as telling some people not to tell who He was or what He did. This morning’s passage is no different. Let’s read it together.
“Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Iduma, beyond the Jordan, and the region of tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so they would not crush him, for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But Jesus sternly ordered them not to make him known (Mark 3: 7- 12).”
The question has often been asked, “Why would Jesus forbid people to tell who He was?” Didn’t He come to be known? And if He forbade people not to tell, then why did so many people come to Him to see Him, listen to Him and touch Him? His secret was not a very well kept secret!
There are two approaches to this secrecy. Some say that Jesus used reversed psychology. What do you do when someone tells you a secret? I know some people have told me they would rather not know the secret because keeping it is so difficult. We like to tell others spicy news about others. If that was not true, all those celebrity magazines and television shows would have ceased to exist a long time ago. We simply like to spread the gossip. And we know from all the four gospels that Jesus did enough miracles and taught enough provocative parables to create much gossip. Even if He tried to stop it, people had to tell what they had seen, heard and experienced. And that may have been why Jesus told people to be quiet.
Bu there is another theory about this messianic secret as scholars call it. It was not so much that Jesus was trying to keep the lid on who He was. He was streamlining where the message was to go. If Jesus’ mission was to keep His presence secret, He failed miserably as this passage would show. But if His mission was to let those who were in need to know to discover Him and do His best to attenuate any opposition that would get in the way of the Good News to spread, then Jesus was more successful.
As we travel through the gospel according to Mark, we have met Jesus who hangs around sinners, forgives sins, removes evil spirits from people and heals even the untouchable. He has declared that He is the master of the Sabbath and even dared to heal on the Sabbath. All these things, to the religious person of His day, made no sense. If someone was sick, it was because they had done something wrong for which they were punished. They had committed some sin or other, or they parents or grandparents had. If someone was possessed of a demon, that person should not be approached. They were cursed, probably for who they were or what they had done. If a person was untouchable, they should be removed from the community, lest they contaminate others. And the Sabbath was reserved for rest and worship, nothing less, nothing more. Anyone who did more could not possibly be holy.
Can we really fault the religious leaders of the day when, upon witnessing Jesus disregard for the law of the Sabbath, decided that they must find a way to get rid of Jesus? They approached their nemesis, the Herodians. How interesting company one keeps in fighting a common adversary! The Pharisees, who despised the Romans because they were ungodly gentiles, aligned themselves with a political party that had very close ties to Rome. They had formed their own religious lines, rejected by the Pharisees and other orthodox Jews. They were called the Herodians because they were the party and perhaps the militia of Herod Antipas, the ruler appointed by Rome over Galilee.
Jesus’ mission was not to overthrow the Roman government as the Pharisees led the Herodians to believe. Jesus’ mission was not to do away with the Jewish Law. He came to free people from the wrongful interpretation of the Law God gave to His people through Moses. Over the centuries, religious lawyers had created a vast array of interpretations and descriptions of what God really wants from people and what make Him happy. These had become so burdensome that either one was super religious, as were the Pharisees, or one was a reject and lived in the shamed of feeling abandoned or rejected by God because of all the rule, demands and verdicts rendered by the religious Law.
How many of us, if we fall prey to sickness, or face a negative situation, see this as a punishment from God? I would venture to say that most of us do – especially when we pray for a reversal from the situation and it does not come. We figure that God must be punishing us for something we have done or said or left undone. When we feel that way, it is rather discouraging, wouldn’t you say? If God is our only hope and we feel that God is now against us, what hope is there?
This is the kind of thinking that Jesus came to undo. That is why he hung around “sinners” and the sick and the marginal people of his society. They needed to know that God cared and their situation had nothing to do with being unloved or being unlovable or because God was punishing them for some unknown sin. Bad things happen, to anyone – not necessarily for any purposes or reasons. We live in a world that is not perfect, that is in many ways and because of that, many of us have to suffer.
Yet, despite Jesus’ coming and despite His message of freedom and forgiveness, despite His death and resurrection, how many of us struggle with the issues of forgiveness and freedom that are ours through Him? How many of us publicly shy away of expressing our faith because we struggle with these issues? We say to ourselves that we are a poor example for a follower of Jesus so we would rather keep it hidden so that we are not judged on our poor performance. We quietly wonder if we are Christians at all. We wonder if Jesus’ life giving message is true.
There were no doubts in the mind of so many who pressed around Jesus when he was near the sea. They came from everywhere on the rumours about Jesus that had travelled in their direction. They went looking Jesus and found Him, most having their lives touched and transformed forever.
But we, who are two thousand years removed from this event look with wonder. If only we could see Jesus with our own eyes, touch his garment with our own hands. Then all our doubts and all our weakness would be removed. It wouldn’t be so hard to have faith and be people of faith. It wouldn’t be so tough to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
What we forget is that despite have seen Jesus, it was much tougher for His followers then than it is today. How many of us will die because of our faith? How many of them did?
No, Jesus early disciples did not keep His presence and His message a secret. They made it a point to spread the message of freedom and forgiveness they had received. Jesus told those who would provoke the authorities about the Good News to be quiet. His time to be killed had not arrived and they should not hasten it. He told those who might misunderstand His actions to be quiet so that false rumours would not spread faster than they already were.
But for the rest, there were no warnings; there were no injunction to be quiet. And the word spread. Has our lives been touched by Jesus somewhere along the journey of our lives, however long ago that may be? If you have encountered Him and made the decision to be one of His own, then know that you are a free person. You are free from your sins. You are free from thinking that God is indifferent to you., You are free from thinking you do not matter to god and that he can’t possibly love you because of your situation. It is simply not true. Christ died for you to prove it. He came for you – whether you are dealing with a setback in your life, whether you live with an health issue, whether your family is together or broken apart, whether you’re not sure where your life is heading or whether you are facing the end of your journey. You have been made free to life to the fullest of life you were made for.
There is nothing the evil spirits like better than to make us doubt the validity of God’s love or of our faith. Jesus doesn’t – and never has – wanted secret followers. To follow Jesus is to be out in the open because He is out in the open. It is to be strong in the belief that His spirit lives within us and will guide us on the right path. It is to live in the hope and the joy that we are free to be the persons God has meant us to be. We are not meant to be burdened by religious restrictions or fears of insignificance. We are freed by the grace brought to us by Jesus.
Where are you at this morning? Are living as a free person, freed by the Good News of Jesus and His life giving death and resurrection? What stops you from being free?
A Changed Life
Mark 2: 18- 22
8 May 2011, Mothers’ Day
When I began this series on the gospel according to Mark, I knew that there would be times when I would encounter more obscure passages. Well this morning is one of them. And as I sat at my desk early last week, I thought to myself, “Of all the times of the year, to hit a strange passage on mother’s day is horrible.” I proceeded to reread the passage, and then it all made sense to me.
Let’s read the passage. It is found in Mark chapter two, beginning at verse 18. “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting: and people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and they will fast on that day.
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one put new wine into fresh wineskins (Mark 2:28- 22).”
Do you see how well this passage fits with mother’s day? I didn’t think so. Let me unpack what I think Jesus is telling us and I’m positive that it will make sense.
Let me begin with the context of what Jesus said. He was approached by John the Baptist disciples along with others who followed the ways of the Pharisees. Part of their rituals was fasting twice a week. The idea of fasting was to help make prayer clearer. Once the body is hungry, it becomes more attuned to the higher desire of God’s presence. The idea to refrain from eating in order to pray better was to hasten the day when God would once again look with favour upon Israel. It was like tightening one’s belt in the hopes that God would finally notice and return.
This is still a practice amongst Christians as individuals or even churches seek a greater sense of direction for decisions that must be made.
But Jesus makes the remark that one does not fast when someone important is around. If a wedding is happening, one does not tell the guest, “Sorry people, but today happens to be my fasting day, so there will be no food and no drinks at the reception.” Can you imagine going to such a wedding reception? What would we think of the host?
Jesus is making the claim that He is present and as such, no fasting is necessary. He is revealing that He is God, present in the world. Why fast anymore? Why behave as if He was not there, as if He were hiding?
This makes sense doesn’t it? If the guest you have been waiting for so long shows up, you rejoice. Now that I have two children who live on their own, I know more what I put my mother through when I left home. I know what it is like to wait for children to come for a visit – or even telephone. It is great! When they are there, I want to take full advantage of their presence. I want to pamper them some – to make sure they come back!
When they come, I don’t say, “Sorry guys, I’m on a diet of lettuce, fresh water and tofu, that’s all we’re going to eat. And by the way, we’re saving on electricity so there is only power for three hours a day, between, seven and ten in the morning.” That would be silly.
Jesus says, “I am here with you, rejoice, don’t be sad. Don’t live as if I am away. Life can be different now that I am here.”
Those of you who are mothers, tell me: would you say that your life changed at the birth of your children? Did your life continue to change as they grew up? What kinds of things changed for you? Would any of you say that given all those changes, you wish you had no children?
Children change people, in more way than one. A mother is changed physically, mentally, emotionally and I would say even spiritually by their children. They see life differently by this life what was formed inside them. Even grown children remain children in a mother’s heart. These are all things that are difficult to put into words, but I think you understand what I am saying.
That is exactly what Jesus is saying. Now that His kingdom has arrived, now that He lives with us and in us through his Spirit, life is different. Although we rarely patch clothes anymore, in the old days, people did. Natural fabric that has been washed many times will not shrink much compared to band new natural fabric. I remember having pants with patches on the knees growing up. Most of those were the iron on patches. They never stayed that long because that fabric did not respond to the washes the same way the rest of the pants did.
We don’t make wine in wineskins anymore either. But from what I read, new wine worked within the skin. New skin was flexible and could withstand the fermentation process. Old skins, because of the acidity of the wine and having been stretched already, have become brittle and cannot take the fermentation process a second time.
So, the gist of it is this: The old is for the old, the new is for the new. One does not stay the same in the face of change. Something new happens. As a new mother learns the responsibilities of raising a child, there are things that become different in her life. Bed-time might come earlier. Household tasks become more frequent. The social life becomes less important. Even work may take less of a place in a mother’s life. As a child discovers life, so do mothers begin to see life from a child’s perspective.
With Jesus in our life, the same happens. We begin to see life from God’s perspective. Every human being is loveable. Every human being deserves respect, whether they belong to our group of friend or whether they share the same ideas.
With Jesus in our midst, we know that we are a people who can always have hope, because God is with us, no matter what. We never have to worry whether we are loveable or not because we are. Jesus has proven it to us. We don’t have to wonder what is life all about. Life is about love: being loved by God and others and loving others as God loves us. As Jesus said, it is about doing unto others what we wish was done for us.
I don’t have to ask the question whether mothers live for their children or not. I know the answer and I think that you do too.
What Jesus said is this: Because He is with us, we don’t live according to the old or former practices we may have followed before we knew Him. Everything in life is now new. There is new joy, there is new purpose, there is new hope, there is new perspective, there is new perseverance in face of adversity, there is new freedom, there is new generosity, there is new peace, there is new self control and the list goes on.
Living with Jesus, knowing that He is in our midst is very much like a mother discovering the joys of motherhood. It requires work but the reward are great. It involves change but that change is worth the whole word then some.
To be a mother is a great journey, teaching, guiding and then watching one’s children fly on their own. To be a follower of Jesus is to follow a master who has shown us what it means to live fully and to be in the presence of a loving, caring and True God. May the thought of motherhood inspire us to dedicate our lives to in following Jesus who is in our midst and offers to live within us if we but allow Him in.
8 May 2011, Mothers’ Day
When I began this series on the gospel according to Mark, I knew that there would be times when I would encounter more obscure passages. Well this morning is one of them. And as I sat at my desk early last week, I thought to myself, “Of all the times of the year, to hit a strange passage on mother’s day is horrible.” I proceeded to reread the passage, and then it all made sense to me.
Let’s read the passage. It is found in Mark chapter two, beginning at verse 18. “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting: and people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and they will fast on that day.
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one put new wine into fresh wineskins (Mark 2:28- 22).”
Do you see how well this passage fits with mother’s day? I didn’t think so. Let me unpack what I think Jesus is telling us and I’m positive that it will make sense.
Let me begin with the context of what Jesus said. He was approached by John the Baptist disciples along with others who followed the ways of the Pharisees. Part of their rituals was fasting twice a week. The idea of fasting was to help make prayer clearer. Once the body is hungry, it becomes more attuned to the higher desire of God’s presence. The idea to refrain from eating in order to pray better was to hasten the day when God would once again look with favour upon Israel. It was like tightening one’s belt in the hopes that God would finally notice and return.
This is still a practice amongst Christians as individuals or even churches seek a greater sense of direction for decisions that must be made.
But Jesus makes the remark that one does not fast when someone important is around. If a wedding is happening, one does not tell the guest, “Sorry people, but today happens to be my fasting day, so there will be no food and no drinks at the reception.” Can you imagine going to such a wedding reception? What would we think of the host?
Jesus is making the claim that He is present and as such, no fasting is necessary. He is revealing that He is God, present in the world. Why fast anymore? Why behave as if He was not there, as if He were hiding?
This makes sense doesn’t it? If the guest you have been waiting for so long shows up, you rejoice. Now that I have two children who live on their own, I know more what I put my mother through when I left home. I know what it is like to wait for children to come for a visit – or even telephone. It is great! When they are there, I want to take full advantage of their presence. I want to pamper them some – to make sure they come back!
When they come, I don’t say, “Sorry guys, I’m on a diet of lettuce, fresh water and tofu, that’s all we’re going to eat. And by the way, we’re saving on electricity so there is only power for three hours a day, between, seven and ten in the morning.” That would be silly.
Jesus says, “I am here with you, rejoice, don’t be sad. Don’t live as if I am away. Life can be different now that I am here.”
Those of you who are mothers, tell me: would you say that your life changed at the birth of your children? Did your life continue to change as they grew up? What kinds of things changed for you? Would any of you say that given all those changes, you wish you had no children?
Children change people, in more way than one. A mother is changed physically, mentally, emotionally and I would say even spiritually by their children. They see life differently by this life what was formed inside them. Even grown children remain children in a mother’s heart. These are all things that are difficult to put into words, but I think you understand what I am saying.
That is exactly what Jesus is saying. Now that His kingdom has arrived, now that He lives with us and in us through his Spirit, life is different. Although we rarely patch clothes anymore, in the old days, people did. Natural fabric that has been washed many times will not shrink much compared to band new natural fabric. I remember having pants with patches on the knees growing up. Most of those were the iron on patches. They never stayed that long because that fabric did not respond to the washes the same way the rest of the pants did.
We don’t make wine in wineskins anymore either. But from what I read, new wine worked within the skin. New skin was flexible and could withstand the fermentation process. Old skins, because of the acidity of the wine and having been stretched already, have become brittle and cannot take the fermentation process a second time.
So, the gist of it is this: The old is for the old, the new is for the new. One does not stay the same in the face of change. Something new happens. As a new mother learns the responsibilities of raising a child, there are things that become different in her life. Bed-time might come earlier. Household tasks become more frequent. The social life becomes less important. Even work may take less of a place in a mother’s life. As a child discovers life, so do mothers begin to see life from a child’s perspective.
With Jesus in our life, the same happens. We begin to see life from God’s perspective. Every human being is loveable. Every human being deserves respect, whether they belong to our group of friend or whether they share the same ideas.
With Jesus in our midst, we know that we are a people who can always have hope, because God is with us, no matter what. We never have to worry whether we are loveable or not because we are. Jesus has proven it to us. We don’t have to wonder what is life all about. Life is about love: being loved by God and others and loving others as God loves us. As Jesus said, it is about doing unto others what we wish was done for us.
I don’t have to ask the question whether mothers live for their children or not. I know the answer and I think that you do too.
What Jesus said is this: Because He is with us, we don’t live according to the old or former practices we may have followed before we knew Him. Everything in life is now new. There is new joy, there is new purpose, there is new hope, there is new perspective, there is new perseverance in face of adversity, there is new freedom, there is new generosity, there is new peace, there is new self control and the list goes on.
Living with Jesus, knowing that He is in our midst is very much like a mother discovering the joys of motherhood. It requires work but the reward are great. It involves change but that change is worth the whole word then some.
To be a mother is a great journey, teaching, guiding and then watching one’s children fly on their own. To be a follower of Jesus is to follow a master who has shown us what it means to live fully and to be in the presence of a loving, caring and True God. May the thought of motherhood inspire us to dedicate our lives to in following Jesus who is in our midst and offers to live within us if we but allow Him in.
On Popular and Not-Popular People
Mark 2: 13- 17
1 May 2011
Up until a few years ago, I had three teenagers living at home. I gained a bit of knowledge in those years about what it means to be part of the popular group and not being part of it. I learned that if you were in the popular group that there were certain people that you didn’t really associate with. Why? Well, because they were not part of the right group. Were they “losers?” I would ask. Not necessarily, I was told. It’s just they didn’t quite fit in.
And what happens when you’re not with the popular group? You don’t associate with them. But why, I asked. Because they’re popular that’s why! I could never figure this out – and I still can’t. What makes a person popular and not popular also seems as nebulous. The popular people seem to be the ones who are either well known by being more of a public figure. Or, it seems, they are popular by the way they dress and the kind of company they keep. The non popular are in that group because, it would seem, they are less in the limelight. They might be involved in things but are more in the background. They are also less popular because of the company they keep. At least, that is the way I have come to understand it as a father.
But when I think of it, as adults, we still do categorise people by what they do, how they do it and the company they keep. Think of all the people you meet in the run of a day, or a week. They all fit in various categories. We easily associate with the people who are in the right categories. Those who fall in the other categories, we tend to stay away from. We watch them from a distance.
We tend to trust the people who fall in the right categories but not so much those who fall in the other ones. We tend to like those who are in the right groups but not so much the ones who are not. If I were to ask you what kinds of people fit in the right category, I’m sure you could quickly come up with a description. But if I were to ask you why this is the right category, I suspect that it would be more difficult to come up with the reasons, at least reasons that make sense to someone who is not part of that category.
And then sometimes the way we categorise people is strange. In an article that was published in the Chronicle Herald entitled, A bully to some might be a best friend to others, the write explores our strange ways of categorising people. Most people don’t like bullies. We’d rather get rid of them. But transplant them in an arena, and they love the big defenseman who does not shy away from pounding an opponent into the boards. We don’t like people who bad mouths us or our close friends, but we cheer when the right politician demeans his or her opponent. And in times of election, how easy it is to disassociate ourselves from people we may have once have been close to because their political views are different from ours. For whatever reason, we think less of them than before.
All this is nothing new. The same popular and not popular groupings have existed for a long time. Let me read to you this story from Jesus time and you’ll see that Jesus himself was confronted with the same thing.
“Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And Levi got up and followed him. And as Jesus sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples – for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw t5hat he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners (Mark 2: 13- 17).’”
If the scribes considered themselves as part of the popular group and also considered Jesus as one of the popular crowd, then it’s not too surprising that they were shocked when they saw Him hanging around the non-popular people. But Jesus set the record straight. He didn’t belong to one group or another. He belonged to everyone. He was not going to let anyone lay a special claim to Him.
He said that He came for sinners. A sinner, as the people back in His day would have understood, were people who were seen as not worthy of God. They weren’t good enough for Him. Tax collectors were not liked because they collected taxes for the government which was not religious but pagan. Poor people, sick people, sad people and farmers, especially those who had animals were seen as sinners. A person of God would not associate with anyone like that because it would make them unworthy of God too.
Jesus said He came for sinners because He came to announce that God’s kingdom and God’s love is not just for those who think they have it all together and that God is happy with them because of how they look and what they do. In fact, the kingdom of God is for those who know they don’t measure up. It’s for those who don’t think God wants them around because of who they are – maybe poor, sick, troubled, lonely, sad or guilty of having done something wrong. Jesus said He came for them because of all people, they need to know that God loves them, that they are not rejects and that they are highly valued by God, even if society doesn’t think much of them.
In God’s kingdom, in Jesus’ circle of friends, there is no room for categories of people. Everyone is the same, everyone is welcome, everyone is forgiven, everyone is loved the same.
I think that what Jesus shows in this story is that there is no one who is not worthy of being valued and cared for – whether a person is a bully, whether a person is bullied, they all need God’s love. They might need it in different ways, but they need it nonetheless. Rather than passing a judgement on whether we should spend time and effort with a person because of the category we have put them in, we need to think “how can I best show that God loves this person?”
The drama we saw a few moments ago shows the torment we all experience when we are separated from God, whether this happens because of our actions, our decisions, or the company we keep. It brings pain inside when we be apart from God. Jesus knows that and that is why He came, to tell us and show us that He can replace this pain with hope and with love. Whether we are popular or not popular makes no difference. God loves us all the same and in Jesus He offers us the same hope, the same forgiveness and the same chance for life.
May we see people as Jesus sees them: in need of being loved and treated with justice. May we stop categorising people and learn to share God’s love with everyone equally. May we indeed live as Jesus as taught us to live.
1 May 2011
Up until a few years ago, I had three teenagers living at home. I gained a bit of knowledge in those years about what it means to be part of the popular group and not being part of it. I learned that if you were in the popular group that there were certain people that you didn’t really associate with. Why? Well, because they were not part of the right group. Were they “losers?” I would ask. Not necessarily, I was told. It’s just they didn’t quite fit in.
And what happens when you’re not with the popular group? You don’t associate with them. But why, I asked. Because they’re popular that’s why! I could never figure this out – and I still can’t. What makes a person popular and not popular also seems as nebulous. The popular people seem to be the ones who are either well known by being more of a public figure. Or, it seems, they are popular by the way they dress and the kind of company they keep. The non popular are in that group because, it would seem, they are less in the limelight. They might be involved in things but are more in the background. They are also less popular because of the company they keep. At least, that is the way I have come to understand it as a father.
But when I think of it, as adults, we still do categorise people by what they do, how they do it and the company they keep. Think of all the people you meet in the run of a day, or a week. They all fit in various categories. We easily associate with the people who are in the right categories. Those who fall in the other categories, we tend to stay away from. We watch them from a distance.
We tend to trust the people who fall in the right categories but not so much those who fall in the other ones. We tend to like those who are in the right groups but not so much the ones who are not. If I were to ask you what kinds of people fit in the right category, I’m sure you could quickly come up with a description. But if I were to ask you why this is the right category, I suspect that it would be more difficult to come up with the reasons, at least reasons that make sense to someone who is not part of that category.
And then sometimes the way we categorise people is strange. In an article that was published in the Chronicle Herald entitled, A bully to some might be a best friend to others, the write explores our strange ways of categorising people. Most people don’t like bullies. We’d rather get rid of them. But transplant them in an arena, and they love the big defenseman who does not shy away from pounding an opponent into the boards. We don’t like people who bad mouths us or our close friends, but we cheer when the right politician demeans his or her opponent. And in times of election, how easy it is to disassociate ourselves from people we may have once have been close to because their political views are different from ours. For whatever reason, we think less of them than before.
All this is nothing new. The same popular and not popular groupings have existed for a long time. Let me read to you this story from Jesus time and you’ll see that Jesus himself was confronted with the same thing.
“Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And Levi got up and followed him. And as Jesus sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples – for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw t5hat he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners (Mark 2: 13- 17).’”
If the scribes considered themselves as part of the popular group and also considered Jesus as one of the popular crowd, then it’s not too surprising that they were shocked when they saw Him hanging around the non-popular people. But Jesus set the record straight. He didn’t belong to one group or another. He belonged to everyone. He was not going to let anyone lay a special claim to Him.
He said that He came for sinners. A sinner, as the people back in His day would have understood, were people who were seen as not worthy of God. They weren’t good enough for Him. Tax collectors were not liked because they collected taxes for the government which was not religious but pagan. Poor people, sick people, sad people and farmers, especially those who had animals were seen as sinners. A person of God would not associate with anyone like that because it would make them unworthy of God too.
Jesus said He came for sinners because He came to announce that God’s kingdom and God’s love is not just for those who think they have it all together and that God is happy with them because of how they look and what they do. In fact, the kingdom of God is for those who know they don’t measure up. It’s for those who don’t think God wants them around because of who they are – maybe poor, sick, troubled, lonely, sad or guilty of having done something wrong. Jesus said He came for them because of all people, they need to know that God loves them, that they are not rejects and that they are highly valued by God, even if society doesn’t think much of them.
In God’s kingdom, in Jesus’ circle of friends, there is no room for categories of people. Everyone is the same, everyone is welcome, everyone is forgiven, everyone is loved the same.
I think that what Jesus shows in this story is that there is no one who is not worthy of being valued and cared for – whether a person is a bully, whether a person is bullied, they all need God’s love. They might need it in different ways, but they need it nonetheless. Rather than passing a judgement on whether we should spend time and effort with a person because of the category we have put them in, we need to think “how can I best show that God loves this person?”
The drama we saw a few moments ago shows the torment we all experience when we are separated from God, whether this happens because of our actions, our decisions, or the company we keep. It brings pain inside when we be apart from God. Jesus knows that and that is why He came, to tell us and show us that He can replace this pain with hope and with love. Whether we are popular or not popular makes no difference. God loves us all the same and in Jesus He offers us the same hope, the same forgiveness and the same chance for life.
May we see people as Jesus sees them: in need of being loved and treated with justice. May we stop categorising people and learn to share God’s love with everyone equally. May we indeed live as Jesus as taught us to live.
Being Touched
Mark 1: 40-45
17 April 2011 (Palm Sunday)
I would like for you to travel with me this morning. I’d like to take you to Jerusalem that day – do you remember that day when Jesus made His triumphant entry into the city? No one quite remembers how the rumours started, but there were rumours all right. It was in the days leading to the Passover. There was already an influx of people coming. Many of them were coming to offer their sacrifices to God in the holy temple.
Whether it was them who brought the news is unclear. But soon there was a buzz. The Holy One of God was near. The Holy One – the Messiah – the One Jews had been waiting for – the one who had been prophesied about for so long was said to be coming into Jerusalem.
Very few people doubted that He was the One because of all the things He did. He healed people, He cast out demons just the way our teachers and prophets had said He would. And so many people heard Him speak about the coming of a new kingdom. He Himself had said He had come just for that, to announce the arrival of a new era.
When the rumours started to circulate that He was coming soon, people were starting to get excited. Could this be the moment? That was talk in a lot of places in and around the city. And then word came that He was actually on His way.
A few people started to rush to the road coming into Jerusalem. They wanted to see Him for themselves. Then a few more came and next thing you knew, both sides of the road were filling up. There was a high murmur of anticipation. Some people even climbed the trees to grab branches, offering palm leaves to their neighbour standing beside them. Were they going to use them as flags?
Then finally, over the edge of the road, we could see Him. And all at once, just as if on cue, people stated to sing and dance and clap. Thos who had taken palm branches off the tress started to throw them on the road. Some people even took their coats off – all this to make a welcoming carpet for the One and Only, the new King.
“Hosanna!” People chanted. Other burst with “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, our God!” And not to be out done, others shouted, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, the great king David.” And all together again, they sang, “Hosanna in the highest!”
People couldn’t stand still. Everyone was trying to touch him or see him up close. He was sitting on a donkey, his closest allies surrounding him. And as soon as the procession passed by, the people filled in behind, making this like a parade that had not been seen since the days of King David himself, I’m sure.
What a wonderful and jubilant moment this was. Do you remember? But do you know why that day became possible? Do you know why so many people came to greet Him that day as He made His way to our nation’s capital, to God’s holy city? Well, in large measure, I think it’s my fault. Not that what I did was bad – or even wrong for that matter. I just couldn’t help it.
Do you want to know what I did? Before I can tell you, I have to go back.
It all started when one day, I noticed a red patch on my belly. Had I been bitten by an insect through the night? It was itchy, but manageable. As the days wore on, the patch grew bigger and was getting redder. Little bumps started to appear too. It did so much itch but it was sore. It hurt. I was getting worried. I could start feeling it on my back too. Did I have the dreaded disease?
I didn’t dare ask anyone – not yet. I couldn’t bear think of it. I vowed to keep it quiet. No one had to know. I could hide it under my clothes. But then it stated to appear on my legs and my arms. I was so miserable. I had to confess I was a leper. I was a condemned man – condemned by God for why did I get that disease?
I was condemned by my family – I was no longer fit to work and provide for them. Not only that. My mere presence in the house would have condemned them too. What if I infected them? Did I want God’s curse on them too?
I was condemned by the town’s priest who examined me. When he asked me how long I had been like this. When I told him over two weeks, he asked me if I was getting better or worse. I said I was worse. He then shouted as loud as he could, “Simeon, you are unclean. From now on you must cover the bottom of your face. Whenever someone comes near you, you must shout that you are unclean, lest they become unclean too by coming too close to you or worse, touch you. You must also leave this town and never return until you are healed. If and once you are healed, I or another priest will examine you and if we determine that you are indeed healed, we will do what is necessary to be clean again. Then you will be allowed back to the village and your home. Do you understand?”
Did I understand? Of course I did. But I was so broken up, it was not just my body that gave me pain, but my heart, my head, everything was in pain. I nodded my head because holding on to my tears took all the energy I had. I couldn’t speak.
Crying, I made my way in the wilderness, banished from my home, banished from my family, banished from my community. How I prayed. How I prayed night and day, day and night. “God please, I plead with you, heal me! Take that curse of leprosy away from me.” But nothing, nothing was happening.
That is until the day I met Him. I had heard of things happening in Capernaum, how so many people had been healed by this man before. I heard from well-meaning travellers walking on the road that goes by my little hut that there was a healer nearby. Some said that they, themselves, had been healed from a disease. A man even told me he had had an evil spirit and the man had removed it. They all said that He could probably do something for me.
I thought about it. I was a man without hope – as good as dead to the world around me. What did I have to lose? I started to look for him. From a distance, I asked passersby if they had seen or heard of the Healer. Those who had directed me in the direction they thought He was. It took me a few days, but one morning, I heard he was near where I was. I waited outside the village for him to come out on His way to another place.
And then He appeared. I knew it was Him because of the crowd pressing near Him. I rushed to Him, fell down right in front of Him and begged him, through tears, “Sir, Sir. I have heard about you. I know you can heal me if you are willing. Please. I beg you, make me clean again. I want to live!”
Through my tears, I could see Him looking down at me. “I am willing,” He said. My heart leapt within me! He was going to make be well. I expected Him to say the some healing formula, but I saw his hand reach for me. He was going to touch me. I tried to get up as quick as I could. I didn’t want Him to touch me. I didn’t want him to become unclean because of me. But I wasn’t quick enough. He touched my shoulder and said, “Be clean.”
And believe it or not, the pain that I had lived with for so long was gone. Just like that. I felt my arms, my chest, my legs. There was no pain. There were no more bumps. I lifted my sleeve. The redness was gone. I was healed! I was clean! The curse had been removed.
I took my face shield off. I was smiling so much I couldn’t articulate any words. I mumbled something or another as I got to my feet. I kissed him – yes I kissed him. I kissed his hands, I kissed His cheeks. I just couldn’t contain myself.
After a few moments, He held me by the shoulders and looked at me with all the seriousness of the world. “Friend, I don’t want you to tell anyone what happened here. What I want you to do is to go back to your village. Call the priest and let him examine you. He’ll be the one to declare you clean to the people. And offer the sacrifices that the Law of Moses dictates for you cleansing. No go, friend, go.”
I left all right. But there was so much joy, so much happiness in me that everyone I encountered heard about Jesus. He had touched me. He had touched me, a leper and He made me clean! How can you keep that quiet? On my way home, whenever I saw someone who was sick or distraught or in need of anything, I told them about Jesus. Through the villages and the towns I passed on my way to my family, I let everyone know: “Do you need to be healed? Do you need to find hope? Do you need to be made clean? Go and find the man named Jesus. He’ll touch you like you have never been touched before.”
Next thing I heard, Jesus couldn’t travel anymore because anywhere He went, people would do just what I told them to do! They went to be touched by Him. And that went on and on until that day in Jerusalem.
Do you see what I mean now that it is partly my fault for all those crowds?
And I haven’t stopped telling people about Jesus’ touch. Do you need a friend – a real friend? Do you need hope, true hope for your life? Do you need direction, real direction for living? Do you want to know the truth, the truth about who you are? Do you want to find love, real, everlasting love? Do you want freedom, real freedom from issues, from feelings that weigh you down? Then go search for Jesus. Look for Him until you find Him and let Him touch you.
He touched me, an untouchable, and a leper. He will touch you.
And once He does, don’t keep it in – tell your friend. Tell someone else who needs to be touched. And never forget how he touched you.
17 April 2011 (Palm Sunday)
I would like for you to travel with me this morning. I’d like to take you to Jerusalem that day – do you remember that day when Jesus made His triumphant entry into the city? No one quite remembers how the rumours started, but there were rumours all right. It was in the days leading to the Passover. There was already an influx of people coming. Many of them were coming to offer their sacrifices to God in the holy temple.
Whether it was them who brought the news is unclear. But soon there was a buzz. The Holy One of God was near. The Holy One – the Messiah – the One Jews had been waiting for – the one who had been prophesied about for so long was said to be coming into Jerusalem.
Very few people doubted that He was the One because of all the things He did. He healed people, He cast out demons just the way our teachers and prophets had said He would. And so many people heard Him speak about the coming of a new kingdom. He Himself had said He had come just for that, to announce the arrival of a new era.
When the rumours started to circulate that He was coming soon, people were starting to get excited. Could this be the moment? That was talk in a lot of places in and around the city. And then word came that He was actually on His way.
A few people started to rush to the road coming into Jerusalem. They wanted to see Him for themselves. Then a few more came and next thing you knew, both sides of the road were filling up. There was a high murmur of anticipation. Some people even climbed the trees to grab branches, offering palm leaves to their neighbour standing beside them. Were they going to use them as flags?
Then finally, over the edge of the road, we could see Him. And all at once, just as if on cue, people stated to sing and dance and clap. Thos who had taken palm branches off the tress started to throw them on the road. Some people even took their coats off – all this to make a welcoming carpet for the One and Only, the new King.
“Hosanna!” People chanted. Other burst with “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, our God!” And not to be out done, others shouted, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, the great king David.” And all together again, they sang, “Hosanna in the highest!”
People couldn’t stand still. Everyone was trying to touch him or see him up close. He was sitting on a donkey, his closest allies surrounding him. And as soon as the procession passed by, the people filled in behind, making this like a parade that had not been seen since the days of King David himself, I’m sure.
What a wonderful and jubilant moment this was. Do you remember? But do you know why that day became possible? Do you know why so many people came to greet Him that day as He made His way to our nation’s capital, to God’s holy city? Well, in large measure, I think it’s my fault. Not that what I did was bad – or even wrong for that matter. I just couldn’t help it.
Do you want to know what I did? Before I can tell you, I have to go back.
It all started when one day, I noticed a red patch on my belly. Had I been bitten by an insect through the night? It was itchy, but manageable. As the days wore on, the patch grew bigger and was getting redder. Little bumps started to appear too. It did so much itch but it was sore. It hurt. I was getting worried. I could start feeling it on my back too. Did I have the dreaded disease?
I didn’t dare ask anyone – not yet. I couldn’t bear think of it. I vowed to keep it quiet. No one had to know. I could hide it under my clothes. But then it stated to appear on my legs and my arms. I was so miserable. I had to confess I was a leper. I was a condemned man – condemned by God for why did I get that disease?
I was condemned by my family – I was no longer fit to work and provide for them. Not only that. My mere presence in the house would have condemned them too. What if I infected them? Did I want God’s curse on them too?
I was condemned by the town’s priest who examined me. When he asked me how long I had been like this. When I told him over two weeks, he asked me if I was getting better or worse. I said I was worse. He then shouted as loud as he could, “Simeon, you are unclean. From now on you must cover the bottom of your face. Whenever someone comes near you, you must shout that you are unclean, lest they become unclean too by coming too close to you or worse, touch you. You must also leave this town and never return until you are healed. If and once you are healed, I or another priest will examine you and if we determine that you are indeed healed, we will do what is necessary to be clean again. Then you will be allowed back to the village and your home. Do you understand?”
Did I understand? Of course I did. But I was so broken up, it was not just my body that gave me pain, but my heart, my head, everything was in pain. I nodded my head because holding on to my tears took all the energy I had. I couldn’t speak.
Crying, I made my way in the wilderness, banished from my home, banished from my family, banished from my community. How I prayed. How I prayed night and day, day and night. “God please, I plead with you, heal me! Take that curse of leprosy away from me.” But nothing, nothing was happening.
That is until the day I met Him. I had heard of things happening in Capernaum, how so many people had been healed by this man before. I heard from well-meaning travellers walking on the road that goes by my little hut that there was a healer nearby. Some said that they, themselves, had been healed from a disease. A man even told me he had had an evil spirit and the man had removed it. They all said that He could probably do something for me.
I thought about it. I was a man without hope – as good as dead to the world around me. What did I have to lose? I started to look for him. From a distance, I asked passersby if they had seen or heard of the Healer. Those who had directed me in the direction they thought He was. It took me a few days, but one morning, I heard he was near where I was. I waited outside the village for him to come out on His way to another place.
And then He appeared. I knew it was Him because of the crowd pressing near Him. I rushed to Him, fell down right in front of Him and begged him, through tears, “Sir, Sir. I have heard about you. I know you can heal me if you are willing. Please. I beg you, make me clean again. I want to live!”
Through my tears, I could see Him looking down at me. “I am willing,” He said. My heart leapt within me! He was going to make be well. I expected Him to say the some healing formula, but I saw his hand reach for me. He was going to touch me. I tried to get up as quick as I could. I didn’t want Him to touch me. I didn’t want him to become unclean because of me. But I wasn’t quick enough. He touched my shoulder and said, “Be clean.”
And believe it or not, the pain that I had lived with for so long was gone. Just like that. I felt my arms, my chest, my legs. There was no pain. There were no more bumps. I lifted my sleeve. The redness was gone. I was healed! I was clean! The curse had been removed.
I took my face shield off. I was smiling so much I couldn’t articulate any words. I mumbled something or another as I got to my feet. I kissed him – yes I kissed him. I kissed his hands, I kissed His cheeks. I just couldn’t contain myself.
After a few moments, He held me by the shoulders and looked at me with all the seriousness of the world. “Friend, I don’t want you to tell anyone what happened here. What I want you to do is to go back to your village. Call the priest and let him examine you. He’ll be the one to declare you clean to the people. And offer the sacrifices that the Law of Moses dictates for you cleansing. No go, friend, go.”
I left all right. But there was so much joy, so much happiness in me that everyone I encountered heard about Jesus. He had touched me. He had touched me, a leper and He made me clean! How can you keep that quiet? On my way home, whenever I saw someone who was sick or distraught or in need of anything, I told them about Jesus. Through the villages and the towns I passed on my way to my family, I let everyone know: “Do you need to be healed? Do you need to find hope? Do you need to be made clean? Go and find the man named Jesus. He’ll touch you like you have never been touched before.”
Next thing I heard, Jesus couldn’t travel anymore because anywhere He went, people would do just what I told them to do! They went to be touched by Him. And that went on and on until that day in Jerusalem.
Do you see what I mean now that it is partly my fault for all those crowds?
And I haven’t stopped telling people about Jesus’ touch. Do you need a friend – a real friend? Do you need hope, true hope for your life? Do you need direction, real direction for living? Do you want to know the truth, the truth about who you are? Do you want to find love, real, everlasting love? Do you want freedom, real freedom from issues, from feelings that weigh you down? Then go search for Jesus. Look for Him until you find Him and let Him touch you.
He touched me, an untouchable, and a leper. He will touch you.
And once He does, don’t keep it in – tell your friend. Tell someone else who needs to be touched. And never forget how he touched you.
Where is Jesus, Continued
Mark 1: 35- 39
10 April 2011
I don’t know about you but I had a busy week last week. It all started with a ministerial meeting with my colleagues from the Canning and Area churches. From our discussion there, it was obvious that I was not the only one with a charged schedule. On Wednesday, I met with a fellow pastor who has been a guide for me during this last year of study. As part of our monthly encounters, I had to give him my account of what I do from day to day for a month. His first words to me were, “Looking at your daily schedule made me glad that I am no longer a full time pastor! I don’t miss that busyness.”
I know I am not the only here living a busy life. Many, if not most of you are extremely busy at work, or with your families or participating and volunteering in different activities and organisations. When we go to bed at night, we fall asleep quickly – or perhaps have a difficult time falling asleep because we think of all the many other things that have yet to be done.
These past two weeks, we looked at a day in the life of Jesus which was rather busy for him. It all began going to worship in the synagogue of Capernaum. There, Jesus taught the people with a degree of authority the hearers had never heard. While still there, he exorcised an evil spirit. On entering Simon and Andrew’s house, there was no hello good to have you. His greeting was, Simon’s mother-in-law is sick. “We’ve heard what you did in the synagogue; can you make her well too? She’s lying down and can’t get out of bed. That is how sick she is. So please, do something, anything.”
Jesus, as we know, went up to her bed, took her by the hand, lifted her up and just like that, she was healed. She felt so good that she began to serve the many who were in the house. The news of what had happened in the synagogue and at the house spread like a wild grass fire. As soon as the Sabbath was over, at sundown, the restriction to travel being lifted, people began to bring their sick loved ones and those who had evil spirits inside them. Someone would come to the door, pleading. “Jesus, we’ve heard what you did. Can you do the same for me, for my brother, for my sister, for my father, for my mother? Please, we don’t know where else to turn. We’ve tried other things but it didn’t help.” And all night long it went like this, people coming in and out.
Just thinking of the day Jesus had makes me feel exhausted! But as I expressed last week, everything that happened that evening can make us wonder, where is Jesus today? How come we don’t witness all those miracles that are recorded in the gospels? Is it that people then had more faith than we do today? Is it because somehow Jesus is absent?
This is a question I often hear when something happens. Where is Jesus – where is God? Why did this happen to me? Is it because I have done something wrong? Is it that my faith has faltered somewhere along the way?
The first disciples also were wondering where Jesus was on the morning after all the healings took place. Perhaps, people came knocking at the door that morning seeking for healing. But Jesus was not in the house. Worried, perhaps, they went searching for the One who had performed so many miracles the day before. Why wasn’t he at his post?
“In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you (Mark 1: 35-37).”
Have you ever searched for someone and having difficulties finding them? That is rather frustrating, isn’t it! It’s like when your children a small. One moment they are busy paying somewhere, making noise and all of a sudden, you realise all is quiet, too quiet even. You go search for them. And perhaps, they have fallen asleep, or are quietly looking at pictures or getting into mischief!
I am sure the disciples were wondering what was going on! They search the house, the street, the synagogue even. It was not until they searched a lonely corner of the neighbourhood that they found Jesus, praying.
I wonder what the disciples thought when they first saw Jesus praying? Did they think he was wasting His time and short changing the people by not being there for them? It was not just the disciples that were looking for Jesus. There were all kinds of people still seeking Him for healing and to have their demons cast out. Going away to be alone, was this being insensitive? Indeed, is praying a waste of time?
We all know the importance of prayer. We often speak of needing prayers and needing to pray for others. But do we take the time to pray? I must confess that the busier I get, the more I have to do, the less time I take to be alone and pray. I feel I don’t have time to pray because there are too many things to do.
But after a busy day, and before another one, that is exactly what Jesus did. He went away somewhere by himself, to pray.
I will be the first one to admit that I quickly forget the benefit of such time alone with God, doing what Francis of Assisi said is good to do in prayer. “When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing – nothing.” We must seek nothing but to be in the presence of God. Having done so numerous times I know how wonderful it is and how much more at peace I am when I do it. Yet, even though I know it in my head, I often stop that knowledge to be translated into action. Perhaps it is the same with you.
Søren Kierkegaard, a theologian and philosopher of the nineteenth century once wrote, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” Indeed it does, but how often I short-change myself for not doing it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I don’t pray. I do. What I don’t do, is take the time and make the effort to find a place of solitude and pray – pray seeking nothing but to be with Him. How often do we make the effort and take the time to do this?
So the disciples find Jesus, by himself, praying. We don’t know what they thought when they saw him but we know what they said.
“When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ Jesus answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons (Mark 1: 37- 39).”
Of course, the disciples wanted to bring them back to their place. They were proud of Jesus and what He had done and what He could do. They wanted to sit down near Him and listen Him teach because what He said was so profound, so beautiful and so insightful. But Jesus said no. He was not going back to Capernaum, at least not right now.
I can just imagine their disappointment. I know what that feels like. Last Sunday, Janice and I had planned to have supper with our oldest son after the Acadia Chorus Spring concert. We even invited one of his friends to come along. We were sure he would say yes. We usually take him out after all his performances when we are there. And after all, how can a child say no to the invitation of his parents? I am sorry to say that we left with our heads low. David had other plans. He had another rehearsal to tend to. There was no time.
Disappointed as we were, I am sure, the disciples went along with Jesus to the neighbouring towns. There, He went to the synagogues to preach and teach about the good news. There he cast out many more demons.
But I wonder if the disciple did not question themselves about why Jesus didn’t want to go back to Capernaum. Did they do something wrong? Was there something that Jesus had found offensive with the place? Were the people not up to His standard, whatever that might be?
It’s just like us when we question where Jesus might be when we pray for something or seek His guidance and we come up with blank answers – or worse, when the answer seems to be no. We wonder if there might be something wrong with us. We wonder what we could do to get Him on our right side. We wonder if we need to be perhaps more spiritual for Him to show us the way. And at times, when things are difficult and dark, when we search for Jesus and can’t seem to find Him, we truly wonder: Where is Jesus? Why doesn’t He answer with all the power and might He displayed when He walked the roads of Galilee?
The reason Jesus did not go back to Galilee is simple: He wanted the good news to be shown other places too. It was not limited to Capernaum. Just like I cannot assume that I always am the top priority of my children, I cannot assume that Jesus will give me what I want when I want it. My children are their own persons and sometimes, I just don’t fit in it. That doesn’t mean they don’t love me or don’t care about me. It’s just that their priority for the moment is not me.
It’s not because I may not find Jesus’ power right here and now that it means He has pushed me aside. There is a purpose to His actions. Maybe His power is to be displayed through me in a different way that I would like it to be. If I were to be sick, may be my sickness is meant to show Jesus power in a way I had not thought of. I have met many people who ministered to their loved ones in powerful ways through sickness. Their hope and their confidence in God glowed in ways it did not before. Isn’t that Jesus at work in the person’s life?
When Jesus took the time to separate himself from the busyness of life through prayer, He knew it was important. It was through those times that he gained the strength, the wisdom and the insight He needed from God to continue on His ministry on earth. I think we do well when we follow His example. For it is through those times that we discover the depth God God’s compassion and the wisdom of His guidance. Such prayer time call us to go beyond words and just to be silent. As mother Teresa so aptly said, “God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”
In the busyness of life, may we remember to take the time to retreat to spend a few moments alone with Jesus. When we do, we’ll find Him near, waiting for us.
10 April 2011
I don’t know about you but I had a busy week last week. It all started with a ministerial meeting with my colleagues from the Canning and Area churches. From our discussion there, it was obvious that I was not the only one with a charged schedule. On Wednesday, I met with a fellow pastor who has been a guide for me during this last year of study. As part of our monthly encounters, I had to give him my account of what I do from day to day for a month. His first words to me were, “Looking at your daily schedule made me glad that I am no longer a full time pastor! I don’t miss that busyness.”
I know I am not the only here living a busy life. Many, if not most of you are extremely busy at work, or with your families or participating and volunteering in different activities and organisations. When we go to bed at night, we fall asleep quickly – or perhaps have a difficult time falling asleep because we think of all the many other things that have yet to be done.
These past two weeks, we looked at a day in the life of Jesus which was rather busy for him. It all began going to worship in the synagogue of Capernaum. There, Jesus taught the people with a degree of authority the hearers had never heard. While still there, he exorcised an evil spirit. On entering Simon and Andrew’s house, there was no hello good to have you. His greeting was, Simon’s mother-in-law is sick. “We’ve heard what you did in the synagogue; can you make her well too? She’s lying down and can’t get out of bed. That is how sick she is. So please, do something, anything.”
Jesus, as we know, went up to her bed, took her by the hand, lifted her up and just like that, she was healed. She felt so good that she began to serve the many who were in the house. The news of what had happened in the synagogue and at the house spread like a wild grass fire. As soon as the Sabbath was over, at sundown, the restriction to travel being lifted, people began to bring their sick loved ones and those who had evil spirits inside them. Someone would come to the door, pleading. “Jesus, we’ve heard what you did. Can you do the same for me, for my brother, for my sister, for my father, for my mother? Please, we don’t know where else to turn. We’ve tried other things but it didn’t help.” And all night long it went like this, people coming in and out.
Just thinking of the day Jesus had makes me feel exhausted! But as I expressed last week, everything that happened that evening can make us wonder, where is Jesus today? How come we don’t witness all those miracles that are recorded in the gospels? Is it that people then had more faith than we do today? Is it because somehow Jesus is absent?
This is a question I often hear when something happens. Where is Jesus – where is God? Why did this happen to me? Is it because I have done something wrong? Is it that my faith has faltered somewhere along the way?
The first disciples also were wondering where Jesus was on the morning after all the healings took place. Perhaps, people came knocking at the door that morning seeking for healing. But Jesus was not in the house. Worried, perhaps, they went searching for the One who had performed so many miracles the day before. Why wasn’t he at his post?
“In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you (Mark 1: 35-37).”
Have you ever searched for someone and having difficulties finding them? That is rather frustrating, isn’t it! It’s like when your children a small. One moment they are busy paying somewhere, making noise and all of a sudden, you realise all is quiet, too quiet even. You go search for them. And perhaps, they have fallen asleep, or are quietly looking at pictures or getting into mischief!
I am sure the disciples were wondering what was going on! They search the house, the street, the synagogue even. It was not until they searched a lonely corner of the neighbourhood that they found Jesus, praying.
I wonder what the disciples thought when they first saw Jesus praying? Did they think he was wasting His time and short changing the people by not being there for them? It was not just the disciples that were looking for Jesus. There were all kinds of people still seeking Him for healing and to have their demons cast out. Going away to be alone, was this being insensitive? Indeed, is praying a waste of time?
We all know the importance of prayer. We often speak of needing prayers and needing to pray for others. But do we take the time to pray? I must confess that the busier I get, the more I have to do, the less time I take to be alone and pray. I feel I don’t have time to pray because there are too many things to do.
But after a busy day, and before another one, that is exactly what Jesus did. He went away somewhere by himself, to pray.
I will be the first one to admit that I quickly forget the benefit of such time alone with God, doing what Francis of Assisi said is good to do in prayer. “When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing – nothing.” We must seek nothing but to be in the presence of God. Having done so numerous times I know how wonderful it is and how much more at peace I am when I do it. Yet, even though I know it in my head, I often stop that knowledge to be translated into action. Perhaps it is the same with you.
Søren Kierkegaard, a theologian and philosopher of the nineteenth century once wrote, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” Indeed it does, but how often I short-change myself for not doing it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I don’t pray. I do. What I don’t do, is take the time and make the effort to find a place of solitude and pray – pray seeking nothing but to be with Him. How often do we make the effort and take the time to do this?
So the disciples find Jesus, by himself, praying. We don’t know what they thought when they saw him but we know what they said.
“When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ Jesus answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons (Mark 1: 37- 39).”
Of course, the disciples wanted to bring them back to their place. They were proud of Jesus and what He had done and what He could do. They wanted to sit down near Him and listen Him teach because what He said was so profound, so beautiful and so insightful. But Jesus said no. He was not going back to Capernaum, at least not right now.
I can just imagine their disappointment. I know what that feels like. Last Sunday, Janice and I had planned to have supper with our oldest son after the Acadia Chorus Spring concert. We even invited one of his friends to come along. We were sure he would say yes. We usually take him out after all his performances when we are there. And after all, how can a child say no to the invitation of his parents? I am sorry to say that we left with our heads low. David had other plans. He had another rehearsal to tend to. There was no time.
Disappointed as we were, I am sure, the disciples went along with Jesus to the neighbouring towns. There, He went to the synagogues to preach and teach about the good news. There he cast out many more demons.
But I wonder if the disciple did not question themselves about why Jesus didn’t want to go back to Capernaum. Did they do something wrong? Was there something that Jesus had found offensive with the place? Were the people not up to His standard, whatever that might be?
It’s just like us when we question where Jesus might be when we pray for something or seek His guidance and we come up with blank answers – or worse, when the answer seems to be no. We wonder if there might be something wrong with us. We wonder what we could do to get Him on our right side. We wonder if we need to be perhaps more spiritual for Him to show us the way. And at times, when things are difficult and dark, when we search for Jesus and can’t seem to find Him, we truly wonder: Where is Jesus? Why doesn’t He answer with all the power and might He displayed when He walked the roads of Galilee?
The reason Jesus did not go back to Galilee is simple: He wanted the good news to be shown other places too. It was not limited to Capernaum. Just like I cannot assume that I always am the top priority of my children, I cannot assume that Jesus will give me what I want when I want it. My children are their own persons and sometimes, I just don’t fit in it. That doesn’t mean they don’t love me or don’t care about me. It’s just that their priority for the moment is not me.
It’s not because I may not find Jesus’ power right here and now that it means He has pushed me aside. There is a purpose to His actions. Maybe His power is to be displayed through me in a different way that I would like it to be. If I were to be sick, may be my sickness is meant to show Jesus power in a way I had not thought of. I have met many people who ministered to their loved ones in powerful ways through sickness. Their hope and their confidence in God glowed in ways it did not before. Isn’t that Jesus at work in the person’s life?
When Jesus took the time to separate himself from the busyness of life through prayer, He knew it was important. It was through those times that he gained the strength, the wisdom and the insight He needed from God to continue on His ministry on earth. I think we do well when we follow His example. For it is through those times that we discover the depth God God’s compassion and the wisdom of His guidance. Such prayer time call us to go beyond words and just to be silent. As mother Teresa so aptly said, “God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”
In the busyness of life, may we remember to take the time to retreat to spend a few moments alone with Jesus. When we do, we’ll find Him near, waiting for us.
